Carolina Crown
Carolina Crown (86.00), July 13, Minneapolis, MN
Open Class: Blue Devils B (82.60), July 14, Bellflower, CA
High caption scores of the week by section World Class: Brass: Carolina Crown (17.6), July 13, Minneapolis, MN Percussion: The Cadets (17.3), July 14, DeKalb, IL Color Guard: Blue Devils (17.3), July 14, DeKalb, IL
The Cadets
Brass: Vanguard Cadets (16.6), July 14, Bellflower, CA Percussion: Blue Devils B (16.6), July 14, Bellflower, CA Color Guard: Vanguard Cadets (16.1), July 14, Bellflower, CA
View all scores and recaps. Storylines to watch • Sunday Surge: After finishing third at the DCI Minnesota event on Saturday, July 13 in Minneapolis, the Cadets made up a 1.55-point deficit in just 24 hours to tie for the top spot with Carolina Crown at the Tour of Champions series event on Sunday, July 14 in DeKalb, Ill. Since finishing second behind the Blue Devils on both June 22 and 23, Crown has won every event it's competed in. • The tie between Carolina Crown and the Cadets in DeKalb left the Blue Devils in third place. Not since July 17, 2011 did the Concord, Calif. corps finish an event in third. Like this year, it last occurred at a Tour of Champions series event. Blue Devils finished that day behind the Cadets and Cavaliers respectively. The corps ended the 2011 season in second place behind the Cadets at the DCI World Championship in Indianapolis.
Bluecoats
• One of the more interesting and volatile captions to look at on the score sheets of recent events is percussion. In DeKalb on July 14, the Cadets took first in the percussion caption followed by Santa Clara Vanguard, Blue Devils, Cavaliers, Bluecoats and Phantom Regiment. Carolina Crown's percussion finished seventh out of the seven corps at the event where it finished first or second place in all other captions. In Minneapolis the day before, the Blue Devils had taken first in percussion, followed by Cadets, Santa Clara Vanguard, Bluecoats and Carolina Crown in fifth. • Competing on July 13 and July 14, Blue Devils B brings its 2013 undefeated streak up to eight events. Fellow California Open Class rivals the Vanguard Cadets continue to finish close, though in Laguna Hills on Saturday, Blue Devils B pushed the gap between the two corps to more than a point for the first time this summer. • Music City competed in its first DCI Tour event of 2013 this past week. The corps took first place in a small lineup of Open Class corps at the DCI Minnesota event on July 13, finishing 0.35 points ahead of Legends. • Blue Knights finished within 0.5 points of the Cavaliers on July 13 in Minneapolis. Since the Blue Knights began competing regularly as part of the DCI Tour in the early 1980s, the Denver corps has never finished ahead of the Cavaliers at any event. Prior to Saturday in Minneapolis, the closest the two corps had ever finished to each other was 1.1 points on Aug. 2, 1999, in Sevierville, Tenn.
Blue Knights
• Blue Knights' slim lead on the Boston Crusaders in Minneapolis on July 13 (five hundredths of a point), is just the third time in five years that Blue Knights finished ahead with the higher score of the two. • After tying in score on July 1 in Mankato, Minn., an anticipated matchup between the Colts and Troopers took place on July 13 in Minneapolis, where the Troopers were able to put a 2.5-point gap between the corps. • Managing a slim tenth of a point lead in Minneapolis, in 11 head-to-head meetings this summer, Saturday marked just the second time that the Troopers finished ahead of Crossmen. • Blue Knights, Crossmen, Boston Crusaders, Blue Stars and Colts all passed 75 points for the first time last week. Only the Blue Devils and Carolina Crown have surpassed 85 points. Carolina Crown did so on July 11 (3 days earlier than doing so in 2012) and Blue Devils on July 13 (1 day earlier than doing so in 2012). • Three additional corps passed the 80-point mark last week. Those groups included Phantom Regiment (80.70 on July 9), Madison Scouts (80.15 on July 11), and Bluecoats (80.10 on July 12). The Cavaliers (79.00 on July 14) looks to be the next corps on target to hit the milestone, with the Blue Knights and Boston Crusaders both having put up scores above 78 points this past week.
Spirit of Atlanta
• Genesis and Les Stentors will make their 2013 debuts July 16 in Bentonville, Ark. and July 20 in Manchester, N.H., respectively. • Based on averaging total scores over the last week, the top 12 corps at the World Championship Finals would potentially be: 1. Carolina Crown, 2. The Cadets, 3. Blue Devils, 4. Santa Clara Vanguard, 5. Phantom Regiment, 6. Madison Scouts, 7. Bluecoats, 8. The Cavaliers, 9. Boston Crusaders, 10. Blue Knights, 11. Spirit of Atlanta, and 12. Pacific Crest. Blue Stars, Crossmen and Mandarins were the next three highest average scores of the week.
