From start to finish, the 2022 DCI Tour was rife with memorable competitive moments, as standings shuffled throughout the summer, all leading toward a final leaderboard that featured a tie, a pair of newly-returned finalists, and several scoring records.
Here are 10 interesting facts from Drum Corps International's 50th Anniversary season:
1 | Return Trips
2022 featured the exciting returns of Troopers and Colts to the Top 12 finalist pool. Neither corps had competed in the DCI Tour’s finale event in more than a decade; Troopers’ most recent appearance came in 2009, while Colts’ came in 2007.
As such, 2022 marked the first time since 2008 that multiple Top 12 finalists had not also appeared in the previous year’s Finals. After both missing 2007’s Finals, Madison Scouts and Blue Stars reached the Top 12 in 2008, serving as the last time a pair of corps achieved an accomplishment akin to that of Troopers and Colts in 2022.
2 | Adding Accolades
In 2018, Boston Crusaders earned the corps’ first-ever George Zingali Award for best color guard performance. The award — which Boston has won twice since that season — was also the corps’ first-ever caption award of any kind.
While past Bluecoats iterations have won caption awards — most recently in 2019, when the corps won a general effect title — the Canton corps became the newest to earn a first-time victory in a specific caption, taking home its first-ever Fred Sanford Award for best percussion performance.
The percussion caption was a close race throughout the season, as Boston Crusaders, Bluecoats, Santa Clara Vanguard and Blue Devils all appeared to have a shot at the Sanford trophy entering the DCI World Championships in Indianapolis. Ultimately, though, the title went to Bluecoats based on a slim margin of less than one tenth of a point on average scores across three days of World Championship competition.
3 | History Books
The past decade has seen its fair share of high scores, including an all-time record-high that still stands to this day, courtesy of 2014 Blue Devils’ final tally of 99.650.
While the 2022 World Champion Blue Devils didn’t crack their seemingly-untouchable record, they did land among the Top 10 of all-time scores. The full list, now, stands as follows:
1 - 2014 Blue Devils - 99.650
2 - 2002 Cavaliers - 99.150
2 - 2005 Cadets - 99.150
4 - 2009 Blue Devils - 99.050
5 - 2010 Blue Devils - 98.900
6 - 2003 Blue Devils - 98.800
6 - 1989 Santa Clara Vanguard - 98.800
8 - 2022 Blue Devils - 98.725
9 - 2012 Blue Devils - 98.700
10 - 2004 Cavaliers - 98.700
A pair of recent championship-winning scores — 2018 Vanguard’s 98.625 and 2017 Blue Devils’ 98.538 — fall just outside the Top 10, in 11th and 12th, respectively.
4 | Catapulted
Beyond being its highest-scoring and highest-placing season of all time, 2022 saw a bit of extra — and, arguably, more niche — history for Boston Crusaders.
Statistically speaking across DCI competitive history, large jumps in placement, first of all, are rare. The higher corps land in the overall rankings, the rarer those jumps tend to be. As such, Boston Crusaders’ jump from sixth in 2019 to second in 2022 — a leap of four placements — has only been replicated four other times by fellow top-five finishers.
Boston’s climb was also the first of its kind in the current century. Other sixth to second jumps across history included 1992 (The Cadets), 1989 (Phantom Regiment), and 1973 (Troopers) while the 1988 Madison Scouts managed to jump from sixth all the way to first.
Bluecoats — who shared 2022’s silver medal with Boston Crusaders — made comparable waves in 2014, but the Canton corps’ jump was slightly smaller, as it moved from fifth to second that season.
5 | Speaking of all-time high scores…
2022 featured — depending how you slice it — 12 of them.
First, there are those who, simply, earned their highest score of all time in any capacity — no caveats or qualifiers: Boston Crusaders, Mandarins, Colts, Guardians, and The Battalion. That’s five.
Then, there are corps whose 2022 final score was their highest in a World Class, Division I or current-era World Championship scoring status. That is, a handful of corps have received higher final “numbers” in the past, but those were earned in years that featured different scoring scales coinciding with different classifications in which said corps competed at the time. That list features Blue Stars, Gold, Music City, Genesis, The Battalion, Les Stentors and Colt Cadets.
Lastly, there’s Southwind. In its days before a 2008-2013 hiatus, the Alabama corps nearly became a Division I finalist on multiple occasions, finishing as high as 13th in 2000. 2022, though, marked the corps’ highest final mark — by a margin of two full points — since it returned to competition in 2014.
6 | On the topic of scoring history…
…one of the many competitive records set in the 2022 season was one of a more collective nature. 2022 set a new all-time high for the number of corps breaking 90, as 10 reached the 90-point threshold by season’s end.
That mark was achieved by just a hair; Mandarins’ score of 90.013 was the first score of 90-or-higher ever earned by a 10th place corps.
2022 was also just the fourth time ever that nine or more corps cracked 90 points. The only other such instances came in 2013, 2004 and 1992.
7 | Raising more bars
Finalists weren’t the only ones making scoring history this past summer. The corps right outside the Top 12 cutoff made their own competitive statements with their Semifinals results.
Crossmen and Blue Knights, 2022’s 13th- and 14th-place finishers, each earned the highest all-time score for their respective placements. Crossmen (13th) finished with a score of 86.925, which is actually a higher mark than the corps earned in its 12th-place 2018 finish. Blue Knights (14th) closed the summer with a tally of 85.788, a score that would have ranked among the Top 12 in three of the past six competitive seasons.
The previous records for highest 13th- and 14th-place scores, interestingly enough, both held for 34 years apiece, having both been set in 1988 by Dutch Boy (86.400) and Crossmen (85.600).
8 | Setting the Standard
2011 marked the first year that DCI’s World and Open Class competitors combined for DCI World Championship competition, all on one leaderboard. As an example of what that looked like, Blue Devils B — 2011’s Open Class champion — earned a score of 95.000 at the Open Class Finals. Then, on the World Class scoring scale at DCI World Championships, Blue Devils B earned an overall 19th-place score of 76.450.
Three years later, in a similar rule change ahead of the 2014 season, that scoring scale became unified across both classes throughout the entire summer season; as in, all participating World and Open Class corps would be rated on the same numerical scale at all events, not just World Championships.
That context provides the basis for a new high mark set by Vanguard Cadets at the tail end of the 2022 season. In the seven competitive seasons since all scores were unified on one rubric, Vanguard Cadets’ 2022 Open Class championship-winning score of 83.625 — earned at the DCI Open Class World Championship Finals in Marion, Indiana — stands as the highest such mark. The previous high, earned by Blue Devils B in 2014, was 82.650.
9 | Deepest Year Ever
Vanguard Cadets weren’t the only ones setting records at 2022’s Open Class Finals. Proving to be one of the deeper scoring years for Open Class corps in recent memory, 2022 saw an astounding four corps crack 80 points at the Marion, Indiana championship event, marking the first time more than two had ever done so since the aforementioned scoring system change.
What’s even more impressive is that all four of those corps — Vanguard Cadets, Gold, Blue Devils B and Spartans — didn’t just break 80. They all broke eighty-one. And even further, they all broke 81 in the Open Class Prelims, too.
For reference, a score of 81 or higher would have earned an Open Class title in 2018, 2017, and 2016. Spartans, 2019’s Open Class gold medalist, earned a winning score of 81.050.
10 | Filling the stands
While Drum Corps International’s first full summer of competitive events since 2019 was record-setting on the field, it was also a record-setting season, in many respects, in the stands.
Most notably, the 2022 DCI Tour saw new attendance highs for the DCI World Championship Prelims presented by GPG Music and the DCI World Championship Semifinals presented by Earasers and InEarz Audio since DCI’s season-ending events moved to Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium full-time in 2009.
The DCI Southwestern Championship presented by Fred J. Miller, Inc. also saw a near-record attendance; a crowd of 14,697 was the second-most since DCI first began hosting events at San Antonio’s Alamodome in 1999.