Gold riding momentum after early-season statement

Something big may be brewing in Southern California.

San Diego-based Gold, a recent rising contender in Drum Corps International’s Open Class ranks, entered the summer of 2022 with nothing but belief. Spirits were high and confidence was higher.

“The last couple of weeks, we've been in McFarland, California, doing our move-ins and Spring Training, drum major Karlin Weisinger said. “And we're just really excited to be on the field.”

Gold was one of the first drum corps to appear on the 2022 DCI Tour — the first competitive tour since 2019. It was the fourth to be exact, having made its debut less than an hour after the drum corps season officially began, June 24 in Vista, California.

Once Gold had a handful of performances under its belt, then it was time to make history, making a competitive statement never before made in the corps’ 17 years of existence.

In its first and second head-to-head meetings with a pair of corps that have combined to win 10 of the last 12 Open Class gold medals — Blue Devils B and Vanguard Cadets — Gold came out on top for the first time ever.

“We're doing some great things,” drum major Karlin Weisinger said. “We focused on ourselves and on getting it done, and then we went out there and got the scores and the work showed what we did.”

July 5 in Fresno, California brought together the three corps for the first of what will be five meetings on the 2022 DCI Tour prior to the DCI Open Class World Championships in Marion, Indiana, August 8-9. The three met again July 8 in Sacramento and July 10 in Stanford.

BLUE DEVILS STAND TALL AT MARQUEE STANFORD EVENT

As recently as 2018 — the last time Blue Devils B and Vanguard Cadets appeared at the DCI World Championships — the three all finished as Open Class medalists, with Vanguard Cadets in first, Blue Devils B in second and Gold in third. The two Bay Area ensembles did not attend the season-finale events in 2019 — while Gold earned a second-consecutive bronze medal — but are scheduled to return this summer.

Three meetings of California’s top Open Class ensembles resulted in two victories for Gold — by 0.2 and 0.1 points respectively — followed by a close win of 0.15 by Blue Devils B in Stanford. Caption scores varied from night to night, which often serves as a clear sign of two very evenly-matched corps.

 

At the end of the day, it’s fair to say based on any number of data points that competition is wide open amongst several Open Class corps. Having reached new heights early on, though, Gold’s preseason self-belief is paying dividends as its tour continues toward the DCI World Championships in August.

“It really showed how hard we've been working and that we really can do this,” Weisinger said.

But for Gold, to be in the conversation amongst “contenders” is still a relatively new phenomenon. Prior to 2018, the San Diego corps had never finished among the top five in Open Class. Its bronze medal in 2018 signified a leap in competitive strata, and was immediately followed by a status-affirming bronze medal in 2019.

With several weeks of touring and competition left, plenty is still up in the air. If nothing else, though, Gold is set to take newfound confidence into the remainder of its national tour.

“It's uncharted territory, but it's also something that we've been preparing for over the last couple of years,” Weisinger said. “We're really looking forward to taking that momentum through the rest of this season and just seeing how far we can go with it.”

View Gold's 2022 Tour Schedule