Colts made plenty of history during the Championship Week portion of the 2022 DCI Summer Tour.
The Dubuque, Iowa corps — A Top 12 finalist for the first time since 2007 — earned its highest score of all time and one of its highest placements of all time, making 2022 one for the books for the “Red Team.”
Icing on the cake of a groundbreaking season, though, was director Vicki MacFarlane’s Director of the Year honors. MacFarlane, who has been with the Colts organization for decades and director of the World Class corps since 2012, received the Dr. Bernard Baggs Leadership Award as part of the DCI World Championship Semifinals on Friday, August 12.
I Am Determined: Vicki MacFarlane inspires excellence through exemplary leadership
“I'm very thankful, just for the support and the recognition,” MacFarlane said. “I just really love the directors in this activity — All those in our activity who have led with so much support to make it possible.”
MacFarlane played a major role both in seeing the Dubuque, Iowa corps — as well as the DCI community at large — through the drum corps activity’s recent COVID-19 shutdown. At the beginning of 2022, MacFarlane was elected to DCI’s Board of Directors.
A prominent female role model in the drum corps activity, MacFarlane’s 2022 Director of the Year Award made her one of two women directors to earn said honors across DCI’s World and Open Class divisions, joining The Battalion’s Katherine Steinacker.
Steinacker receives 2022's Open Class Director of the Year honor
“(DCI CEO) Dan Acheson had mentioned in our board meeting that I was the first female World Class director of the year,” MacFarlane said. “And I think kind of weighs on me; I hope I'm the first of many.”
Colts’ historic competitive season started to come into focus midway through the month of July. Early-season meetings with finalists from the 2019 DCI Tour saw Colts within striking distance of the Top 12 cutoff line.
Eventually, at the summer’s halfway point in San Antonio Colts appeared, officially, in a Top 12 position for the first time.
Based on head-to-head results and scoring rankings, Colts never fell back outside that coveted territory. Rather, they surged even further ahead, pushing as high as 11th place by the start of the DCI World Championships in Indianapolis.
When all was said and done, the corps went out on a high note at the end of its first competitive season in three years, and snagged its all-time high final score of 87.200 in the process.
MacFarlane, who was a marching member in 1995 when Colts earned ninth place — which still stands as the corps’ highest placement ever — and was working with the Colts organization when its World Class corps made Finals in 2007, saw many similarities to those Colts of the past and the 2022 edition. She likened the character of the 2022 ensemble, as well, to Colts’ 1993 corps, which was its first to ever earn a spot in the Top 12.
“When I asked (1993 performers) what was different about that year from prior years, the answer from an alum, unprompted, was the way they cared for the first-year members,” she said. “And just that compassion that people have inside any organization to care for all the people around them. That, to me, is what seems very similar about the 2007 Colts and the 2022 Colts.”
For MacFarlane, simply seeing her corps reach such a major achievement was a memorable highlight. Doing so after a long and challenging handful of years preparing for drum corps’ full return to competitive touring was an added bonus.
Further, MacFarlane’s joy came from more than two decades of work with the Dubuque, Iowa organization — including all 12 of the corps’ consecutive competitive seasons scoring outside the Top 12 prior to 2022.
The Road back to Finals: 2022 Colts
Ultimately, in all respects, it was well worth the wait.
“We've been sitting in the Top 12 since San Antonio right at or just after San Antonio, but we want to take nothing for granted,” MacFarlane said. “At the end of the day, we got our fairytale ending, and I'm really excited about it.