Time to dust off the ol’ blog again. I was thinking about last August when I dusted off the blog for the end of the 2018 Drum Corps International (DCI) season. I was using ARIMA models to try and predict the scores for the final winners. Santa Clara Vanguard (SCV) was the clear favorite last year as they had finished in 1st place for nearly every competition for which they were participants. It was in the first couple of competitions around this time last year that they had not finished in 1st place.
So who is going to take the crown this year? Well to see the future, we must look at the past.
Figure 1 shows the number of championship titles that different Drum Corps have one from 1972 to 2018. The sad thing is that out of the current crop of World Class Corps (22), only eight have won the top spot at the end of the season (Star of Indiana and Anaheim Kingsmen are not in active competition). Only eight!! And The Blue Devils have far and away been among the best corps having won 18 times in that time span. In this decade alone the Blue Devils have won four championships.
That’s great if you’re a BD fan; not so great if you’d like to see others take away the crown.
That was maybe why seeing Santa Clara Vanguard lead the way the entire season last year was fantastic to see. The same was true for the Bluecoats in 2016. Then there’s my new favorite (at least as of 2007 when I first saw them live at the World Championships in Pasadena, CA), Carolina Crown, who won in 2013.
Sadly though, one of the more dominant Drum Corps from 2000-2006, The Cavaliers, have not been quite as relevant since that Championship run in 2006.
So the question becomes, are we going to see a new champion this year? If so, who would it be? Is SCV going to continue the momentum of last season? Will BD rise back up to take the coveted championship yet again?
Well, as you can see from Table 1, my predictions seem to rest heavily on the Blue Devils winning once again. Based on the final predicted scores, it’ll be a bit of a run away as well. Obviously, I’ll come back to these predictions at the end of the season to see how right (or wrong) these turned out to be. I’m sure as we go along through the summer accumulating more and more scores, I’ll get a better idea of how the Corps will fare to the end of the season, hopefully, making better predictions. However, these early predictions presented in Table 1 will be my personal benchmark.
But tonight!! Tonight is the beginning of the 2019 Summer Games in Detroit, MI with the DCI Tour Premiere. The entire country will also get a chance to see this competition in theaters via Fathom Events. To me, it’s always fun to see the very beginning of the season and see how the various Corps progress to the very end. So many things will change between now and August 10th, and every little bit will be exciting and fun.
I did make some preliminary predictions for tonight’s contest as well as The MidCal Champions Showcase on Friday night in Clovis, CA. You can see those in Table 2 below.
At the very least I can see just how good or bad my predictions are for many of the Corps I feel could make a run at the title.
Enjoy the Summer Games! Unfortunately I have a conflict tonight that may keep me from seeing the 1st three performances tonight, but I’m going to at least try to see the 2nd half. As far as making continuous predictions, I don’t think I’ll do them every day. I imagine that I will be back when all the Drum Corps come together for the first time on July 20th in San Antonio, TX (which I hope to see live). Then I’ll work through making predictions for every major event after that where all the Corps compete together in Atlanta, GA on July 27th, in Allentown, PA on August 2nd and 3rd, and finally Championship Week in Indianapolis from August 8th through the 10th!