Day 91

Date: August 14, 2011

Time: 2:45am (EST)

Playing on iTunes: "Angels in the Architecture" by Frank Ticheli

Location: Indianapolis, IN Day 4

Well...I can say it. We are World Champions. The 2011 Cadets have won the Drum Corps International World Championships. I still cannot believe what is going through my mind right now. Amazement, excitement, anxiousness, adrenaline, sadness, just a lot of mixed emotions right now. I am absolutely speechless at the performance we put on tonight.

Building up throughout the day up until the finals performance, we had an amazing amount of support with a huge amount of alumni, friends, and family of the corps coming to see us. There was a breakfast for all in the morning followed by a first hand day meeting. Everyone who liked was able to attend the breakfast (free of charge) as well as come and join us for our finals day meeting and a little age-out ceremony before we started rehearsing. Here’s some pictures from the morning:

Finals day breakfast

Parents at the day meeting

Age-outs from the pit

Age-out parade

All of the age-outs

After the load of activities this morning we got to work. An extremely short day since we didn’t really start until around 11:30 and lunch was at 1...that’s cool though. Iain said that all we really needed to do was warm up and we were good. A crazy amount of rehearsing wasn’t needed. He said we were ready and all we needed to do was go out and do what we knew and were taught how to do.


Here is an awesome story during the day. So parents of a mellophone in the corps have been reading this blog and they saw that the pit liked Gatorade and candy, and also that we had received it every once in a while from visitors throughout the summer. I got pulled to the side by this one man I never seen before and he told me that he had "something for me". It was a cooler of Gatorade and candy for the pit! What an awesome thing these people did for us. We all greatly appreciate it! Thank you again!!

John and Teresa Pryor

Once arriving at Lucas Oil Stadium, there was some confusion about where we were going to rehearse since there was a huge storm coming right toward us. Of course this happens on finals day! It’s okay though, we were able to find an inside area to rehearse. And lucky enough for us we got to change in the visitor’s locker room. Man was that nice, large, and open! So much space. Probably because the football players are so large in the NFL...

So here’s a funny story. We go on last tonight and the Blue Devils go on directly before us. The Cadets get a warm up spot right near the gate to the stadium. This area is used as a walkway for all of the hornlines and drumlines to walk through to get to the gate. There is a garage door that opens every 10 or so minutes to let corps through into the stadium and then it closes once they enter. So that was our first thing to deal with was stopping every 10 or so minutes for a bit so we could let the corps in without the stadium being able to hear us warm up. Our second thing to deal with was the Blue Devils pit. They had no where to warm up outside and so they came and joined us inside in the same area we were in. An interesting scenario, huh? So how this shook out was, The Cadets would get a chance to play a section, then Blue Devils would get a second to play a section of their show warm up, then the door would open so we would have to be quiet, and repeat that cycle a few times. As stressful as this may sound, it was not as bad as it seems because like Iain said, we didn’t really need a warm up. We knew how to go in and just perform like the Cadets we are. We were ready. 

As for the show..............I cannot describe to you in words the emotion coming from that stadium. The corps was fired up and the crowd was on our side. Every show we have had, the end of the percussion feature and the end of the show has gotten the standing ovations. A short, maybe 5 second standing ovation after the drum feature, and then an average 15 second standing ovation at the end of the show. But this time, the end of the drum feature brought an endless standing ovation that trickled into the ballad. There were also various short standing ovations throughout the show that night. But as for the end of the show, I cannot even tell you how amazing this was. If you have not seen the show, after our company front, we play extremely loud and then have another minute or so of marching fast and playing louder and getting louder. Once we hit that big chord after the company front, the crowd stood up and stayed up for the entirety of the rest of the show. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that happening in drum corps history. It was an absolutely amazing feeling. Indescribable. The fact that we can produce the kind of emotion to get a crowd to STAND for the ENTIRE ending of the show. Mind you they weren’t even cheering that loud the whole time, they just continue to stand and watch us. Then the last 30 seconds of the show I couldn’t hear anything but the crowd. I wouldn’t be surprised if on the official DCI recording you wouldn’t be able to hear the corps because the audience was so loud. An absolutely amazing and unforgettable feeling.

2011 DCI Finals Retreat

All of the corps went out onto the field and they present all of the awards and the scores. This is called 'retreat'. That is when we were announced as the 2011 DCI World Champions. Unreal. I will never forget this feeling. We then proceeded to do an encore performance of the show since the winner of DCI World Championships every year performs their show one more time. We were hoping that this last performance would be our best, but I’d say although it may not have been our best, it was definitely the most bittersweet performance. Realizing that it was the last time you’d perform the show to just have fun and unleash all of your emotions. 

Cadets percussion section

DCI World Championship Finals

1) The Cadets - 98.35

2) Blue Devils - 97.80

3) The Cavaliers - 96.85

4) Carolina Crown - 95.30

5) Phantom Regiment - 95.05

6) Santa Clara Vanguard - 92.20

7) Bluecoats - 92.05

8) Boston Crusaders - 90.65

9) Blue Knights - 89.20

10) Madison Scouts - 87.50

11) Blue Stars - 86.20

12) Spirit of Atlanta - 85.35

I did have a couple of visitors come see the show! My girlfriend Bonnie and friend Sean Donnelly (UMass). They got to sit right under the judges press box right on the 50 which is a prime seat during the performance. It was great to see both of them!

For the rest of the night, I just reflected on the season and my life. I knew that this was the best decision of my life and that I learned so much from this experience. Never will I forget everything I learned here and the people I worked with. It’s been a great season!

Thought of the Day: “Life is about the process, not about the goal.”

Day 90

Date: August 13, 2011

Time: 1:33am (EST)

Playing on iTunes: "This Love" by Maroon 5

Location: Indianapolis, IN Day 3

Here we are, semifinals day! As we get closer to finals day, more and more people are coming in, helping, visiting, and volunteering. It’s great to see everyone here. Today we had lots of visitors from our sponsors. This included Zildjian (cymbals), Remo (drum heads), and Yamaha; our largest sponsor (brass instruments/horns, and all percussion instruments). They all hung out by the pit while we rehearsed and I was so glad to see that all of our sponsors were able to see the pit rehearse. They got to see all of our fun warm ups as well as our show excerpts.

Ian Grom showing us his
pogo skills

The schedule today was a lot shorter than yesterday and will be a lot shorter tomorrow. We were by ourselves for a good amount of the day which allowed us to double and triple check everything in the show and make sure we were ready for the show tonight. Since we were by ourselves in one spot for a while and we didn’t have shade at all, I did get a little color. Definitely can feel the heat on my body but since I’ve gotten so much color this summer, it really doesn’t effect me as a burn. Probably not a good thing. I’ll make sure to wear sun screen tomorrow!

We started ensemble with everyone but the guard, so we call it just ‘music ensemble’. We worked the hot spots throughout the show that would mostly effect the Ensemble Music judge in the show tonight. Once the color guard joined it we continued our ensemble and performed so great. Everyone watching us (alumni, friends, family, townspeople) seemed to absolutely love the show.

So I found out that if the pit’s warm up is great and very focused, then our show will be great and focused. Last night’s warm up was great and focused but we seemed to be a little tentative. I think because we were at our first finals show and we were nervous about how the stadium would sound, but now that we know what the corps sounds like inside and we’re excited to perform we had a great, focused, relaxed warm up. We had a lot of fun in the warm up and it was focused. That’s what we needed to get ready for the show and it showed in our performance.

The Cadets went on last tonight since we got first place last night. This really helped us because the last place corps will get the most amount of people in the crowd. This definitely helps with energy for the corps. Throughout the show, the crowd cheered more and more than they did the night before. My favorite part is when the staff, seated right in the first five rows, cheers for us. They’re always the first ones up out of their seat and they know how hard we’ve worked so it means a lot when they’re right by our side cheering. The end of the show was absolutely insane. All six decks of people in front of us rose to their feet for the last 15 seconds of the show. They cheered louder than I had ever heard. It made me feel amazing and I honestly think it beat the feeling that I got at the Atlanta show which had 15,000 people at it. I cannot wait for tomorrow night!! We succeeded with our focus and energy tonight and tomorrow I know that it will only increase. I’m so excited to see what we can produce and cannot wait to perform!

DCI World Championship Semifinals

1) The Cadets - 97.8

2)Blue Devils - 97.3

3) The Cavaliers - 96.9

4) Carolina Crown - 95.6

5) Phantom Regiment - 93.95

6) Santa Clara Vanguard - 92.2

7) Bluecoats - 91.6

8) Boston Crusaders - 90.35

9) Blue Knights - 89.4

10) Madison Scouts - 88.35

11) Blue Stars - 87.00
12) Spirit of Atlanta - 86.55 

Thought of the Day: "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." - Maya Angelou

Day 89

Date: August 12, 2011

Time: 1:15am (EST)

Playing on iTunes: "Hey You" by 311

Location: Indianapolis, IN Day 2

Day two of finals week, very successful. To start of we got woken up by the tubas which was very fun and loud at the same time. Great way to start the day. I usually get some coffee, but a world class drum corps tuba section is just as great!

So today is DCI World Championships Quarterfinals. This is the first of three nights where all the corps from around the country (around 40) will perform and then find out if they made it to the next round - semifinals - and then to the finals round - finals.

Ian Grom's pogo sticking skills

All of the staff has finally come in! Ian, Jerry, and Mike. They’re all back for the rest of finals week. Great to have lots of familiar faces back in and working with us.

There wasn’t a lot going on today other then preparing for our performance tonight. From my perspective, it doesn’t seem like Quarterfinals. Everyone around says that this week is insane and everyone is in a scramble to get ready and they’re all nervous. I am not worried about this performance coming up tonight. It makes me feel like we’re as prepared as possible. If you’re sitting there before a showed anxious and worried, that means you aren’t prepared enough. If you go in comfortable, confident (possibly with a little nerves), and ready to perform then you’ll tear down the house.

Ensemble today was the best ensemble we have had yet. We’ve been in a battle for the field because of the football team is practicing before school gets back in session. And the football clock runs a little differently than we do. When we’re ready to use the field at 3:30, they’re not ready to give it up until 3:40. But this was fine, because all the staff said we were ready and we got everything done very efficiently and great performances on the first repetition. Lots of amazing energy from the corps before quarterfinals.

Finals this year, as similar to years past, is in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. You may be familiar with it because it’s the Indianapolis Colts (football) stadium. It is a dome and so we needed to make sure that we were all prepared to hear the different sounds in the dome. 

The pit road on the same bus into the stadium with the guard because we were rehearsing near the stadium. The brass and battery road different buses because they rehearsed in a park nearby. The pit had a great warm up and was ready to go in there and tear the house down.

As far as the performance, we had our best performance yet, from the pit. It felt great to perform in Lucas Oil Stadium. I had always seen shows from past DCI years such as the 2000s and always dreamed of playing there for DCI Championships. 


DCI World Championship Prelims
1) The Cadets - 97.35
2)Blue Devils - 96.85
3) The Cavaliers - 96.45
4) Carolina Crown - 94.8
5) Phantom Regiment - 94.15
6) Santa Clara Vanguard - 91.85
7) Bluecoats - 91.8
8) Boston Crusaders - 90.2
9) Blue Knights - 88.7
10) Madison Scouts - 88.5
11) Blue Stars - 86.9
12) Spirit of Atlanta - 85.5


The crowd absolutely love the show and we knew that we had torn down the house, even as the second to last performers of the night. Still two more nights to go. Let's see what we can do to this place! Goodnight everyone!

My sleeping quarters during finals week! =)

Thought of the Day: "Passion is what drives your life. Do everything you do with a sense of passion. If you don't, then why do it?"

Day 88

Date: August 10, 2011

Time: 11:43pm (EST)

Playing on iTunes: "Capriccio Italien, Op. 45" by Pytor Tchaikovsky

Location: Knightstown, IN

Recent Trip: 290 miles

 

We have finally made it to our last destination...Indianapolis, IN. We traveled 17,000 miles, toured through 37 states, and have gained uncountable fans along the way.

Here’s our route from this summer, but now complete:

Unbelievable how far we traveled and how much we have done and it is almost over!

Today is our only rehearsal day for finals week, which is ahead of us. It’s also our last full rehearsal day of the summer. In preparation for these three huge days of finals, we need to make sure that logistically we are perfect throughout the entire pit. One big thing we got done today was spray paint the accessory bars for the marimbas, xylophone, and vibraphones. While the girls spray painted, the guys shined cymbals in the showers. That was an entertaining time to say the least!

The percussion section got a special visitor today. His name is Vic Firth. The owner of Vic Firth (link) stick and mallet company, he leads the worlds most reliable, versatile stick company. We are endorsed by Vic Firth for our sticks and mallets.Pumping out 82,000 sticks in a two 10-hour shift day, Vic Firth is known as the place for the worlds best sticks and mallets. I could talk about him for ages, but if you’d like some background about the man, check out this link here and read about him on Wikipedia. He has a lot of experience with anything you can think of music.

He came to talk to us and make sure that we were ready for finals week and that we got his blessings. It was great to know that someone so important in the percussion world had our backs and was excited to motivate us. He is a very wise man. The most important thing he said in our “question-answer” that he had with the percussion section was, “Do what you do well, and do it extremely well.” This really stuck to me because he’s very right in that you need to do something great and do it better. That’s the only way to continue to become greater than you were before.

Dinner tonight was VERY special. We got steak!! And luckily for me, a girl in the pit is a vegetarian so I got her steak as well! I haven’t had steak since the Huntington Beach free day and felt great to have steak again. The steak was very good as you can see below. I would have had a third piece but I decided that wouldn’t be such a good idea. Thank you food truck for cooking us that great food! We, especially the pit, appreciate it!

After our dinner we had our final Hop meeting of the summer. It was great because he summed up everything he had talked about all summer and it was amazing to hear everything that we had learned throughout the three months without even realizing it. All the lessons he has taught us I will take with me forever. This summer has changed my life and George Hopkins has definitely been a part of that. Thank you.

After the Hop meeting, I helped keep some pit kids nice and spiffy for the upcoming shows by cutting their hair. I love cutting because I know it makes people feel good. I love getting haircuts, thusly I love giving them. I gave three hair cuts tonight and they all look good if I do say so myself! All three victims seemed to be very thankful for the haircuts. I also had Taylor cut my hair as well. Now we all match and look great for finals week! We sound good, now we got to look good.

Here we go Cadets! Three shows, what can we make out of it!!

Thought of the Day: “Do what you do well, and do it extremely well.” -Vic Firth

Day 87

Date: August 9, 2011
Time: 11:32pm (EST)
Playing on iTunes: "BWV 849, No. 4 In C# Minor, Prelude" by Johann Sebastian Bach


Location: Massillon, OH
Recent Trip: 170 miles

So the weather seems to be getting more and more comfortable. I don't know if August is supposed to be beautiful weather but it seems to be getting better and better. Luckily there was a good amount of sun all day so I left my shoes out in the middle of the parking lot to dry since they were soaking wet from yesterday's rain fiasco. Today however was a show day, unlike yesterday. And not just any show day. This was our last show day until the finals kick in. So we needed to make sure we went into finals with a bang. 

All throughout the day, there was a great vibe going on throughout the corps. Just excellence leaking from each individual person. I could just tell that we were all amped up for the next coming shows. We all wanted to do the best we could and in order to do that we needed to be focused and hyped to go at all times. Especially with the kids in the pit, their ability to just focus right in so quickly and get things done just blows my mind. I have never worked with a group of that caliber before. It really inspires me to do my best and perform to the best of my abilities. So with this focused approach and energized members, the pit's rehearsal all day was easy. We would work on things, but they didn't need to be repeated very many times. Maybe a few corrections here and there but for the most part we just played something once maybe twice and we were done with it. As Iain said, "You guys are at the point where I don't need to hear these things more than once. You play it perfect the first time, we move on." And that's what we've been doing.

Especially in ensemble it seems to me that the corps is becoming more and more consistent of being a "first rep corps". Which means they get it right the first time, not the second time. If you get it right the second time every time you try something, what happens when you go to the show? In order to just go out and put on a perfect show, you need to be perfect on the first repetition. It is definitely showing up more and more as time goes on and number of days get smaller.

We got a guard bus finally. White this time.

Here's some pictures of the clouds out today. They were absolutely gorgeous:

So funny story, we get to the show site, unload the pit and get set up. We play our warm up then are on the move to the field. Half way to field we get stopped by George and he tells us we need to get inside as soon as possible because there is a huge storm coming. So we move the pit inside this building right next to the stadium. And wait out the storm. 


As were waiting, Phantom Regiment's pit moves their equipment into the school as well. We decide that we should go make friends with them. So for the next hour or so while we're waiting out the insane monsoon going on outside, we bonded with Phantom Regiment's pit. One cool fact I learned about their percussion section is that every single person is a rookie. Due to staff changes, everyone who was there last year moved to where the old staff did and no one stayed. So all there are all new comers in the pit, whether that be people who have marched other places before or it's their first year in the corps. The percussion section is brand new. They seemed to really be interested in learning about us as we were with them. It was a lot of fun for me to talk to another DCI pit because I always feel like there is so much tension between corps if you just see them in passing and don't actually communicate. They're real people too. They like to have fun, they aren't just out hate other drum corps. So that was humbling for me in some regard. We also learned that Phantom's timpanist is named Taylor, and our timpanist is named Taylor. That was a pretty exciting moment of the ice breaker. What a coincidence!! There was a lot that both of our pits had in common. Our mannerisms, things we like to do in our downtime in rehearsal, and things we like to do to keep ourselves sane during rehearsal. Thank you Phantom Regiment pit for welcoming us and I had a great time meeting you all!!

So aside from the show being cancelled due to rain, we were very excited to get going to the next place (Indianapolis) and do the final push to finals. Here comes the last bus ride of the summer!

Thought of the Day: "Take a few minutes a day to yourself, it really clears the mind and will calm you."

Day 86

Date: August 9, 2011
Time: 12:54am (EST)
Playing on iTunes: "On A Hymn Song of Philip Bliss" by David Holsinger


Location: Indiana, PA
Recent Trip: 330 miles

So welcome to Indiana, PA. It was not the most desirable trip here. We pulled into the rest stop and Hop woke us up by whistling and saying, "WAKE UP GUYS! We have a problem!" The guard bus broke down on the side of the highway about 20 miles before our last rest stop, which was about 2 hours away from the housing site. So we needed to get all of our luggage off the bus and onto the food truck so that our bus could go and pick up everyone and everything off of the guard bus. In the meantime, the battery and pit split up between different buses, trucks, and RVs. I got to ride one of the RVs and sat in the front. That was a great time because I had so much leg room compared to the bus and the seat was much more comfortable than my actual bus seat. Go figure. Well, aside from having to move our stuff to the food truck, the ride wasn't too bad. I got enough sleep before we got to the school and I was ready for the rehearsal day.

                

For the morning block, the pit rehearsed outside and worked on some different minor changes that needed to be made to make sure everything was perfect for this upcoming finals week. As soon as we finished with those changes and got back from lunch, we felt a little bit of rain. Vanessa made the call to tarp all the instruments. Good call, because in no time it started to rain, then pour, then eventually monsoon. Luckily everything was covered. Except for my mallets. Come to find out the rain was so intense that it blew my tarp in the exact opposite direction that I intended it to which led to my mallets getting soaked. This wasn't good because I need the mallets the play and you cannot play with waterlogged mallets. They leave water marks all over the keyboard and they just sound squishy and dead. So one thing that we do to fix that problem is break out our absorber and place it on the keyboard, then continuously strike it with our wet mallets so that every hit squeezes out more and more water onto the absorber. It doesn't fully fix the problem, but it cleans up extremely soaked mallets. Luckily we have lots and lots of mallets so I was able to use a completely new set. Hopefully tomorrow there is some sun that I'm able to put these out in so they dry and become useable for this last week of tour.

HERE'S THE NEW GUARD BUS!! It's a rental bus for tonight while the old guard bus gets repaired. We only have this drive tonight to Ohio and then one more long drive to Indianapolis and we are done for the season (aside from the small drives to the stadium for shows).


After our ensemble rehearsal, we did a community performance for the town on Indiana, PA. Half of the people in the audience had seen us last year when the Cadets were here and half had never seen us before so it was great seeing the different variety of people in the audience. I can assure you that by the end, they all were saying, "I want to come back next year." With a standing ovation from the crowd, we played some encore tunes including our all-time favorite "Don't Stop Believing". They all seemed to love that.

Now off to Massilon, OH! Shouldn't be too long of a drive. I hope not because I'm all congested and not feeling to great with this extreme head cold. 

Thought of the Day: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."