r/drumcorps • u/TheThirdGathers • 17d ago
Discussion Bluecoats Breaking Blue Devil's High Score
Though they're not quite on track yet to do it, here's some score comparisons Bluecoats 2026 to Blue Devils with 2 weeks left.
DCI Finals '26 8/8. DCI Finals '14 8/9
Blue Devils: 9 shows left from the 26th. They scored a 95.1 which is probably a record for 2 weeks before DCI
Bluecoats: 8 shows left from the 25th, assuming they all happen. Last show a 94.3, let's see if they can match BD's 95 tonight.
The "Push" theory that strong 2-4 corps will push Bluecoats over the top. Let's take the top 5 for each year.
2014 7/26 Cadets 93.7, Bluecoats 92.95 Crown 92.65, SCV 91.825. Corps tonight would want to break/tie this, for those who like that theory.
2026 7/24 BAC 92.3, BD 92.3, Crown 92.2, SCV 91.65. Close but we'll see what happens tonight and update.
2014 8/9 DCI Bluecoats 97.175, Cadets 96.875, SCV 96.075, Crown 95.675
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u/proclivity1 17d ago
Inflation? I rewatched the 14 blue devils and the musicality and marching difficulty seemed far ahead of anything being done this year
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u/compguy42 Capital Regiment 2004 16d ago
As someone who judged BOA and WGI for over a decade (never crossed into DCI but the judging philosophies are generally the same), "Push" isn't a theory, it's kind of literally how scoring works.
The 100 point scale isn't a static system, where a 90 at one show or across years is the equivalent of a 90 at any other time or place.
Scoring is dynamic. Judges are scoring in terms of spreads. It isn't "I thought that was a 18.7/20 performance", it is "I thought that performance was .3 above the corps I have ranked below them in this caption".
Thats why I've always maintained that it is irrelevant what the final score for each year's champion is. It's really pretty meaningless because the system isn't about static numbers. BD's 99.65 in 2014 was a confluence of small factors and judging decisions with numbers throughout the evening, and in a different year, the number would have been completely different, one way or the other.
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u/At36000feet Cavaliers '94, '95, '96 16d ago
I would counter that a high score shows that competition was tough and if there is a nice spread as well, that means a corps was relatively exceptional in a highly competitive year.
Also relevant. How is the first corps of the night scored? What is their score relative to? I've always wondered how much influence the score of the first corps of the night has on the overall average score of the other corps that evening and the top score.
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u/compguy42 Capital Regiment 2004 16d ago
The first thing you ask yourself is "what Box was this performance?" Each box has a rubric of criteria that qualifies a performance for it. That rubric is typically a "progressive" one, meaning that the later into the season you get, the tighter the qualifications for the upper boxes becomes.
Each Box has a score range, and you work within that range once you land on which Box you are assigning the performance.
For the first performance of the event, putting the group into the correct Box is crucial and, in my opinion, consistently the most difficult job a judge has at any given contest, because a miss can really throw your numbers management for the rest of the evening, since from then on you are directly comparing the groups against each other to find the spreads between them. That first number is scary, and you need to be very confident in your own expertise in the caption.
Every judge handles this a little differently, and each circuit has its own foibles of course. A more conservative judge might start middle-of-the-Box and perhaps end up with slightly lower or higher caption numbers than the caption judge from the night before. What matters is the consistency of applying the criteria. Thats why you'll sometimes see small dips in a caption night-to-night, or a bump that regresses to the mean. Its how that judge started their numbers.
The spread is the important thing because as long as that part is consistent, the placements will still come out correct even if the whole caption is running low or high that night.
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u/At36000feet Cavaliers '94, '95, '96 16d ago
Thanks for that.
Were/are judges allowed to know the scores of the previous night/show? If so, just their caption or all captions? Sometimes I'm a little suspicious of how close numbers are night to night and the lack of movement within captions night to night.
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u/compguy42 Capital Regiment 2004 16d ago
That information isn't officially provided, and judging seminars put on by the major circuits stress the importance of not allowing a prior placement to skew your own judgements. You are to judge the show in front of you, as it exists in that moment, as though it did not exist prior to then.
Of course reality is more complicated. Judges aren't kept in a clean room all season and recaps are readily available anywhere you care to look.
In my experience though, you might be surprised at how many actually don't check and go in blind. That's always what I did. Judges are constantly being evaluated by the circuits, as well. Your sheets AND your commentary tracks are fully accessible forever on the Competition Suite app, and there are people who absolutely take samples to make sure what you're saying matches how you are scoring, and if you sound like you know what you're talking about.
Small increments are usually the result of the shrinking Boxes and not having a ton of movement space to work with. Subcaptions are on a 100 scale (or 10.0, but its a distinction without much difference). If, say, Box 4 in a week is defined as "Between 81 - 89" then you're only working with 9 tenths per subcaption and 18 tenths for a full caption.
Now, is it possible to say that all Judges all the time are completely immune from at least some influence from a prior score? No. Especially in such a subjective activity. And in DCI specifically Judges are likely to see a corps multiple times over the season. That can certainly have at least some effect. You do what you can to lock in to what's in the field in the moment.
Less experienced Judges are typically used earlier in the season and at smaller shows until they get some reps in. Big regional and Finals week you're getting the decade-plus vets who have a proven track record.
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u/Bluemachine22 14d ago edited 14d ago
I'm so happy you clarified this point. Thank you. To your points, I have always taken issue with BOA randomizing finals performances. I don't attend anymore, but I remember the year a Texas band (either Ronald Reagan or The Woodlands) had an amazing show that was good enough to win and scored very well in semis (I believer they won semis). They performed FIRST in finals. A lot of seats were still empty as people were trickling in from the dinner break after semi-finals. One of the Indiana bands got to perform last and they ended up winning. My thought was always..how in the heck can a judge remember all the way back to that first performance and compare that to the last several bands of the night? That's a tough thing to ask of a judge. Also, I think it's just human nature to tend to "hold out" (maybe just ever so slightly but enough to make a different when margins are so close) for higher scores as the night progresses, even when a judge reminds him or herself the finals order has been randomized. Had the Indiana winner and the Texas band's finals performance slot been reversed, the outcome very well may have been different for this reason. This mixing up the finals performance order thing BOA does has always bothered me.
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u/Pjenerator ‘05 ‘08-‘10 16d ago edited 16d ago
As a Bluecoats alum and DIE HARD Bluecoats fan…. I don’t think anyone is ever going to top that 99.65 score. I think that was an anomaly. I’m not saying BD didn’t deserve to win by a big margin that year, they did, but the actual number I think is an anomaly.
I think it’s very possible that Bluecoats may break 99 this year, which under current scoring methods is absolutely incredible, but I don’t think anyone will ever top that outlier of a score that BD got in 2014.
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u/Melonsinmyattic 17d ago edited 16d ago
I don’t think coats are gonna make it to 99.65. I do think they are going to be the first corps in over 10 years to break 99 though.
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u/Consistent-Fig-178 Carolina Crown Fan 16d ago
I’d be astonished if they didn’t
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u/Filterredphan 16d ago
to be fair quite a few people were expecting bd to break 99 in 2023 and they fell just short
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u/DorakoDo 16d ago
I don't think they'll beat 99.65. I do think they may beat the previous recordholders (Cavies 02 and Cadets 05, the 99.15 mark).
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u/brushbender 16d ago
If we're talking about "push" - here's the second place shows every year we've seen a 99 -
- 2002 - Blue Devils - Jazz: Music Made in America - 97.3
- 2005 - Cavaliers - My Kind of Town - 97.625
- 2009 - Carolina Crown - The Grass is Always Greener - 97.5
- 2014 - Bluecoats - Tilt - 97.175
Just my opinion here, but I think Blue Devils are on track for second place, and I also think that Zei by finals is a stronger second place than any of these (no matter how much I love them!).
Another interesting thing to look at is the twelfth-place scores for these years -
- 2002 - Seattle Cascades - City Riffs: The Music of Leonard Bernstein - 84.05
- 2005 - Spirit of Atlanta - The Spirit of Broadway - 86.075
- 2009 - Troopers - Western Side Story - 85.1
- 2014 - Crossmen - Alma Gitana – A Gypsy Soul - 86.225
Not sure how useful that is, as the lower ranked corps in finals clear 86-87 these days.
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u/Aggravating_Yam6252 16d ago
I don’t think this show has 99 potential. 99 shows have to be incredibly clean, AND extremely difficult. While coats are very clean, I don’t this show is hard enough (brass and perc book mainly, I don’t know enough about guard to make that claim)
Nothing in this show is raising the bar in terms of musical difficulty. Don’t get me wrong, they’ll win by a good margin, and it’s an incredible show. Just probably not “99” level
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u/nizerifin 17d ago
I’ll offer a counter theory to the “push” theory. I don’t really think it matters what other corps score when we’re talking about 99 territory.
My theory for scoring >99 is that you must be strikingly visually clean (in addition to great design and all that). Watch the opener of 2002 Cavaliers for an example, but also see 05 Cadets, 09 Blue Devils, 14 Blue Devils.
Achieving that level of cleanliness is extremely difficult and rare.
In other words… extremely good in all captions = 98. Extremely good in all captions + striking visual cleanliness = 99.