2025 Season Recap

[Suburbanbandfan]

As the 2025 marching band season comes to an end, what were your favorite moments and what are some predictions going forward?! 
What was your favorite show? Which bands surprised you this season? 
 

As a reminder this forum is for entertainment. Please be respectful in your post and opinions. 
 

No A.I. talk so help me… 

[Magnichu]

I want to start off by saying, watching ISU from start to finish, every band that went on was phenomenal. The quality of marching band in this state is on the rise. That being said, judges still exist. 

This seems to be an unpopular opinion, but ISU results this year are very questionable, and I hope that gets fixed next year. Let me lay down my points: 

1A/2A session- This scoresheet needed to be discussed more. I agree with the placement of the bands, especially after U of I. My deal is with the details of the sheet. The music GE judges were extremely inconsistent, worse than what I've seen in recent years. And I just don't see how Paris got so low in visual GE, but sure. 

Finals- IVC was good, don't get me wrong. But getting shelved with Collinsville and Galesburg is odd to me. Watching these bands the past couple years, IVC didn't have a huge jump, nor did Collinsville or Galesburg have a drop off. In fact I would say Galesburg improved. The way I see it, if the exact same show were held a year ago, IVC would have been 15th, followed by Collinsville at 14th and Galesburg at 13th. Lemont might be in there as well given prelims scores. In fact, Collinsville beat Lemont by a point in prelims. Lemont jumped by 3 in finals.

Overall, I just want to see more consistency in the state competition, be it within a session or prelims to finals. Point fluctuations at the caption or overall level really shouldn't be as wild as they are at ISU, in my opinion.

[iamwhoiam]

- I would say Romeoville was a highlight of the state finals for me--they win the award for causing the most dancing in the seats, and it wasn't close.
- Kinda funny that U-High seemed to be on nobody's radar, took a (very close) 2nd at ISU 1A, placed 3rd at StL super regionals 1A, and 1st at UofI 2A.  These boards don't know everything lol.
- I don't know the numbers, but Normal appeared to have a considerably smaller group on the field compared with prior years.  Didn't stop them from putting on a wonderful show.  I usually cringe when a singer makes an appearance at a marching band show--but this was subtle and worked for me.  
- I'm not a fan of narration either--in my mind... Normal does such an amazing job at telling a story on the field that they don't need it somebody to tell you about it.  I think the narration should go and let the band tell the story.  
- Morton put on a spectacle--but perhaps it's generating more viral video views than BOA points.  Should be a heck of a showdown at Nationals with Jennison, MI for 2A.  
- Morton would probably get somewhat less grief for being 2A at ISU if Mahomet showed up there.  Small-ish schools can have big bands if they want to.  Kind of a bummer that they don't share the competition field more often.
- East Peoria's Metropolis show was very well designed and performed.  Probably the most memorable small school show for me that didn't involve levitating mellophones.
- I missed Lockport this year.

[Suburbanbandfan]

1 hour ago, Magnichu said:

I want to start off by saying, watching ISU from start to finish, every band that went on was phenomenal. The quality of marching band in this state is on the rise. That being said, judges still exist. 

This seems to be an unpopular opinion, but ISU results this year are very questionable, and I hope that gets fixed next year. Let me lay down my points: 

1A/2A session- This scoresheet needed to be discussed more. I agree with the placement of the bands, especially after U of I. My deal is with the details of the sheet. The music GE judges were extremely inconsistent, worse than what I've seen in recent years. And I just don't see how Paris got so low in visual GE, but sure. 

Finals- IVC was good, don't get me wrong. But getting shelved with Collinsville and Galesburg is odd to me. Watching these bands the past couple years, IVC didn't have a huge jump, nor did Collinsville or Galesburg have a drop off. In fact I would say Galesburg improved. The way I see it, if the exact same show were held a year ago, IVC would have been 15th, followed by Collinsville at 14th and Galesburg at 13th. Lemont might be in there as well given prelims scores. In fact, Collinsville beat Lemont by a point in prelims. Lemont jumped by 3 in finals.

Overall, I just want to see more consistency in the state competition, be it within a session or prelims to finals. Point fluctuations at the caption or overall level really shouldn't be as wild as they are at ISU, in my opinion.

Well spoken! Do you think the scores are affected more by judges themselves or the sheet they are given? Having judges from across the states eliminates bias, but going based on a BOA sheet not all bands have they type of show and/or style. 
 

I would also like to know your thoughts on the finals format. This “session” was of choosing our finalist is still fairly new (2021). Do you think it’s working? How do we make the contest more on an even playing field? What the purpose of holding people off knowing their class. Was this years enrollment weird because of the date or are bands finally done with ISU? 

[Zdsmith]

We got back to the house from WIU last night at 3:25am so I'll have deeper thoughts later, but I saw a lot of shows across the state this season that I really enjoyed. I think there are a lot of groups doing great things from a performance quality aspect even if the design aesthetic doesn't appeal to me. Very proud of IL groups (and even more proud of the ones that are lead by my friends)

Also - random draw now. Every show. Lets make the magic happen. I would 100% consider taking our small 2A band to the gauntlet that is ISU if it was random draw (and there was a chance that we could avoid a terrible call time)!

[pantherband97]

50 minutes ago, Zdsmith said:

We got back to the house from WIU last night at 3:25am so I'll have deeper thoughts later, but I saw a lot of shows across the state this season that I really enjoyed. I think there are a lot of groups doing great things from a performance quality aspect even if the design aesthetic doesn't appeal to me. Very proud of IL groups (and even more proud of the ones that are lead by my friends)

Also - random draw now. Every show. Lets make the magic happen. I would 100% consider taking our small 2A band to the gauntlet that is ISU if it was random draw (and there was a chance that we could avoid a terrible call time)!

Another option would be for ISU to rotate class timeslots like Uof I- it woud make the event more attractive to small school that don't want a 3:30 a.m. call time every year. 

[Magnichu]

2 hours ago, Suburbanbandfan said:

Well spoken! Do you think the scores are affected more by judges themselves or the sheet they are given? Having judges from across the states eliminates bias, but going based on a BOA sheet not all bands have they type of show and/or style. 
 

I would also like to know your thoughts on the finals format. This “session” was of choosing our finalist is still fairly new (2021). Do you think it’s working? How do we make the contest more on an even playing field? What the purpose of holding people off knowing their class. Was this years enrollment weird because of the date or are bands finally done with ISU? 

Watching every show at ISU, I can say that the vast majority of shows fit that BOA style, just more variation in prop interaction. In terms of GE, judges are obviously entitled to their opinion on how effective a show is, but that is to an extent. Things like dynamic, control, articulation, and intensity should remain consistent between judges. This is why I would expect to see more consistency in rank than what we got, at least in 1A/2A. That, plus Music and Visual should stay similar relative to bands between prelims and finals as those captions are more concrete and fact based, barring major differences in runs. As I expect ISU's judging critera is similar or the same as BOA's, the scores fall on the individual judge. This isn't to forget the human element, as well. They judge a LOT at once, and that is respectable, no matter how the scores turn out. 

As to the competition format, I would say it largely works for its goal. Representing all classes is not as important as determining a state champion. In general, with larger schools, you would expect the average player in the band to be more skilled than the average small school player as you have an increased sample size, therefore more chances to land farther from the mean. If you have a band like Morton who breaks that idea, you practically guarentee they get a class win and a placement in finals, furthering the goal of crowning a state champion. Making sure the 1A champion is in finals validates this to a wider extent of crowning the top 15 in the state as we know they can jump past 15th. Does it get annoying when you have outliers like Morton? Yes. But pushing bigger and better bands up classes defeats the point of finals if they all end up in 6A. 

As for not revealing classes... I don't know, man. Maybe the idea of "if you don't know, you'll try harder in case you are in the same class as X band", like a "prepare for the worst" type thing. I think this policy can be abolished, for sure. 

The state of ISU as a whole? I think it's doing just as well as ever. The only counter to this might be John Hersey opting not to attend (which is a mystery still, to my knowledge), but given the amount of new bands that attended, I think everything is just fine. It being early does have the risk of conflicting with homecoming, which could be a problem for bands whose identity is intertwined with the competition (Eureka, IVC, Morton, Marian Catholic, etc.). Hopefully this can course correct soon. 

The biggest change I would like to see (which this year really needed), would be to have the 42 bands divided evenly into 7 per class to the best of the competition's ability. I don't know how the sign up process works, so I don't know how easy it is, but it would be ideal. This would make the workload for each panel of judges more even, allowing them to do more balanced work. Allowing sessions to get as low as 3A/4A did is quite dangerous, too. What happens if they only have 4 in that group show up? It is a relatively rare enrollment group, especially compared to 1A/2A. Not that I think it would dip that low, but if Hersey can bail, anyone can. (Side note: Plainfield Central playing up a class, away from what would be a near guaranteed finals spot to a bloodbath in the middle of 5A/6A? Why?)

There is only one thing that scares me for the future. Marian Catholic is getting dangerously close to being a 1A band. Now we're into the public vs. private debate. 

[TheAngryBavarian]

I'll speak for the Metro-East area, since that's where I have the most knowledge.

O'Fallon have proven themselves to be the best program in the state this year, and I'm quite excited to see how close they can get to their second ever Grand National Finals appearance. 

As an alumnus of the program, and older brother to a current marching member, to see the growth that Collinsville has made over the past few years, continuing through the director change this past offseason, has been very positive. I know that numbers for their beginning band are REALLY good [there was a community call for instruments to make sure every kid that wanted to play could], so growth should continue to happen.

It was nice to see the growth of some of the smaller school programs as well, [Waterloo and Centralia come to mind specifically, but there are certainly others]



As a general statement, There are certain things that I'd like to see improved, consistency of judge sheets in particular [BOA-style or something close to it, ideally], but I am happy with the state of the state as marching band goes.

[RightFootCONTRAian]

18 hours ago, iamwhoiam said:

- I'm not a fan of narration either--in my mind... Normal does such an amazing job at telling a story on the field that they don't need it somebody to tell you about it.  I think the narration should go and let the band tell the story.

I don't care for narration in most shows, but especially when it brings all of your momentum to a halt. Besides, if you have a band that sounds as good as Normal does, why spend so much time of your show NOT playing your instruments?

 

18 hours ago, iamwhoiam said:

- Morton put on a spectacle--but perhaps it's generating more viral video views than BOA points.  Should be a heck of a showdown at Nationals with Jennison, MI for 2A.

Isn't creating moments that are so entertaining and engaging that people literally want to watch them over and over the literal definition of effect in a marching band show?

 

13 hours ago, Magnichu said:

The biggest change I would like to see (which this year really needed), would be to have the 42 bands divided evenly into 7 per class to the best of the competition's ability. I don't know how the sign up process works, so I don't know how easy it is, but it would be ideal. This would make the workload for each panel of judges more even, allowing them to do more balanced work. Allowing sessions to get as low as 3A/4A did is quite dangerous, too. What happens if they only have 4 in that group show up? It is a relatively rare enrollment group, especially compared to 1A/2A.

It's a great idea, but hard to do in practice. Look at U of I - different in the sense that there's no finals format where uneven numbers can give one class/session an "edge" over another, but similar in that there was a much smaller group of bands in the middle (3A especially). There will always be small schools, but as some schools combine or areas consolidate, you get more large schools and get a gap in the middle. Is it concerning for the ISU finals format to let 5 bands out of 9 in? Sure, but let's see this play out over the next 3 - 4 years before we determine if this a consistent problem or an outlier year.

[Zdsmith]

13 hours ago, TheAngryBavarian said:

I'll speak for the Metro-East area, since that's where I have the most knowledge.

O'Fallon have proven themselves to be the best program in the state this year, and I'm quite excited to see how close they can get to their second ever Grand National Finals appearance. 

As an alumnus of the program, and older brother to a current marching member, to see the growth that Collinsville has made over the past few years, continuing through the director change this past offseason, has been very positive. I know that numbers for their beginning band are REALLY good [there was a community call for instruments to make sure every kid that wanted to play could], so growth should continue to happen.

It was nice to see the growth of some of the smaller school programs as well, [Waterloo and Centralia come to mind specifically, but there are certainly others]



As a general statement, There are certain things that I'd like to see improved, consistency of judge sheets in particular [BOA-style or something close to it, ideally], but I am happy with the state of the state as marching band goes.

As the director of Waterloo and good friend of Centralia - I appreciate the shout! We work the kids hard here and try to balance things (demand and our own schedule) so kids can be involved. I appreciate it so much!!! 🙂

[RightFootCONTRAian]

Biggest (Pleasant) Surprise: Plainfield North. I know I've given them their flowers between several threads now, but I thought they had a show that ticked off all of the boxes. Interesting, entertaining, exciting, and sounded great. I hope they keep up the momentum and this season is a preview of things to come.

Biggest Disappointment, (for my own personal interests): Again, I've typed this out before, but I wish LWMB would come back to ISU. I'm sure they view this season as an unequivocal success, (and I wouldn't disagree,) having made finals at 2 BOA events, one of them as cutthroat as show as Indy. I just don't see how traveling to Normal in early October would have changed that outcome in any dramatic way. I can only think of 2 reasons for them to skip the show: One is logistical, the other seems less flattering.

Biggest Questions for the next 3 weeks: With all due respect to Taft, Edwardsville and Murphysboro - how do Marian, Morton, and O'Fallon do at Nats? I think they all have a realistic chance to reach their goals, (class championships for Marian and Morton, finalist spot for O'Fallon,) but it's a TOUGH year with a weekend full of really good bands. If I had to bet on ONLY one happening, I'd say smart money is on Marian winning 1A.

Biggest Question(s) for Next Year: What does the top 5 at ISU look like? Do the Plainfield schools keep their trajectory? What do bands with new directors look like? Who takes the biggest swings next year?

 

[Dan Balash]

56 minutes ago, RightFootCONTRAian said:

If I had to bet on ONLY one happening, I'd say smart money is on Marian winning 1A.

 

 

This should be a back to back 1A championships, but I digress.  The fact that they won 1A in prelims by 1.3 last year and finished 4th in A in semifinals (6 points behind the champion) is just absolutely insane.

[Magnichu]

54 minutes ago, Dan Balash said:

This should be a back to back 1A championships, but I digress.  The fact that they won 1A in prelims by 1.3 last year and finished 4th in A in semifinals (6 points behind the champion) is just absolutely insane.

So goes the thing we love that we call "marching band". I know ISU likes to do that, too. 

[IL Marching.Fan]

Just want to point out how Dwight D. Eisenhower is so far been undefeated since October 16, 2022!

Congrats!

Edited October 27 by IL Marching.Fan

[Suburbanbandfan]

1 hour ago, IL Marching.Fan said:

Just want to point out how Dwight D. Eisenhower is so far been undefeated since October 16, 2022!

Congrats!

That’s a band that doesn’t get enough flowers! I’m a big Cardinal Regiment fan. They are long overdue for an ISU of U of I appearance but I fear this might never happen. If I’m not mistaken, they would land in 4A/5A. Definition of small but mighty. 

[Suburbanbandfan]

Noticed that Michael Steven from Mahomet Seymour is retiring after this school year. Another opening that surely will be popular

[IL Marching.Fan]

Speaking of retirement i’m excited to see in what directions Romeoville will take after the departure of Clark Anderson. We’ll see in the 2026 season!

[RightFootCONTRAian]

The bands I currently know of that will have new directors (in some capacity) due to retirement:

Mahomet-Seymour

Romeoville

IVC

Dunlap

 

There was another one announced during 4A-6A awards at U of I, but I can't remember who that was.

[awkwardpenguin14]

4 hours ago, RightFootCONTRAian said:

The bands I currently know of that will have new directors (in some capacity) due to retirement:

Mahomet-Seymour

I am really curious who takes over this position - from what I heard, Stevens does just about everything. To keep this program as successful as it has been would be a monumental task for whoever takes over. 

[mellophone]

4 hours ago, RightFootCONTRAian said:

The bands I currently know of that will have new directors (in some capacity) due to retirement:

Mahomet-Seymour

Romeoville

IVC

Dunlap

 

There was another one announced during 4A-6A awards at U of I, but I can't remember who that was.

I'd like to add brass caption head of Waubonsie Valley (Mark Duker). Also an alum of U of I. Seeing the recruitment of Hairston from Hendrickson TX as Director, am excited to see who they pick for the role. 

[Zdsmith]

I had a thought that I'd like to put out there as someone who lives the life of a 'show enjoyer' as well as a director - 

 

I know sometimes I see that folks wish that (or post that) "XYZ band would take the next step to do ABC" and as a fan I totally get and understand the sentiment. Please keep in mind, though, that many of these groups are educationally focused/anchored and that, sometimes, the director is happy with their process, progress, and standing. Whether we want them to push the envelope for ISU finals or be a grand national champion at the end of the day.... this is still a class that is teaching young people to be great people and great musicians first and foremost.

 

Just something to chew on. You're also welcome to throw tomatoes at me - I get it.

[Magnichu]

6 hours ago, Zdsmith said:

I had a thought that I'd like to put out there as someone who lives the life of a 'show enjoyer' as well as a director - 

 

I know sometimes I see that folks wish that (or post that) "XYZ band would take the next step to do ABC" and as a fan I totally get and understand the sentiment. Please keep in mind, though, that many of these groups are educationally focused/anchored and that, sometimes, the director is happy with their process, progress, and standing. Whether we want them to push the envelope for ISU finals or be a grand national champion at the end of the day.... this is still a class that is teaching young people to be great people and great musicians first and foremost.

 

Just something to chew on. You're also welcome to throw tomatoes at me - I get it.

I want to preface what I say with this: I am NOT a band director, so please yell at me if I say something idiotic.

I do not disagree with this at all. However, I would offer a kind of counter. Wouldn't the goal of education directly contribute to competitive growth? Obviously there are limits, but I would think this is generally the case. The goal is for kids to be the best performers they possibly can be. That would mean being able to play as technically, musically, with the best tone, and as together as possible. Those all directly affect the score the more sophisticated these skills are developed. In the process, the kids are taught hard work, respect, and many other life skills crucial to being a model citizen. 

So in short, does education = higher scores, kind of?

[Zdsmith]

11 hours ago, Magnichu said:

I want to preface what I say with this: I am NOT a band director, so please yell at me if I say something idiotic.

I do not disagree with this at all. However, I would offer a kind of counter. Wouldn't the goal of education directly contribute to competitive growth? Obviously there are limits, but I would think this is generally the case. The goal is for kids to be the best performers they possibly can be. That would mean being able to play as technically, musically, with the best tone, and as together as possible. Those all directly affect the score the more sophisticated these skills are developed. In the process, the kids are taught hard work, respect, and many other life skills crucial to being a model citizen. 

So in short, does education = higher scores, kind of?

Yes - but without getting into writing an entire thesis, you mentioned the limiting factors in your own statement though 🙂

Think about it - you have different feeder programs, no feeder programs, huge design budgets, no design budgets, huge staffs, small staffs, etc etc etc. I could go on and on, and yes - in the achievement side of the sheets (generally) thats where we are giving feedback on the teaching happening. But my 8th graders don't come into our program with the same skillset as, say, Morton, Galesburg, O'Fallon, Carbondale, etc. (not saying better/worse, just different).

Some groups sitting down can touch a grade 3 on a good year while for some playing anything easier than Music for Prague is a cakewalk. I would wager that there's even more great education happening at those small schools with 1 director (or, even crazier, 1 director doing 6-12, or band and chorus, or K-12) that will just be at different levels because of the equity of time (kids face on instruments), resources, and instructor attention. This is actually one of the biggest reasons that I expanded the instructional staff (within reason) when I got my gig! People are my #1 resource and if I could get more great educators in front of my kids (driving down that teacher:student ratio) the better they would get, faster. (especially because I am a trumpet player. I do my best with WW's but I am no savant!)

I WISH it just came down to the quality of teaching because then every group in Illinois would be box 4 and 5 all the time - but the truth of the matter is that there are SO MANY things that come in and happen before/during/after the education that also change things! If it was just education, the easiest way to adjudicate that would to be to have everyone march the same musical and visual package to directly compare the levels of teaching.

This is not to downplay the impact of the educators of our state in any way shape or form - there are just a LOT of things that go into it!

Edited October 30 by Zdsmith

[Zdsmith]

Oh - I already edited once so I can't again I guess lol.

One more thing I thought of - I didn't really address the 'scores getting better' part of the statement because here in IL we are the wild west (which has its ups and downs) and comparing any show to another OR year over year feels like an exercise in futility given how literally random things can feel! Lol.

Just wanted to add that on because I don't want you to feel like I dodged the question 🙂

[Magnichu]

14 minutes ago, Zdsmith said:

Yes - but without getting into writing an entire thesis, you mentioned the limiting factors in your own statement though 🙂

Think about it - you have different feeder programs, no feeder programs, huge design budgets, no design budgets, huge staffs, small staffs, etc etc etc. I could go on and on, and yes - in the achievement side of the sheets (generally) thats where we are giving feedback on the teaching happening. But my 8th graders don't come into our program with the same skillset as, say, Morton, Galesburg, O'Fallon, Carbondale, etc. (not saying better/worse, just different).

Some groups sitting down can touch a grade 3 on a good year while for some playing anything easier than Music for Prague is a cakewalk. I would wager that there's even more great education happening at those small schools with 1 director (or, even crazier, 1 director doing 6-12, or band and chorus, or K-12) that will just be at different levels because of the equity of time (kids face on instruments), resources, and instructor attention. This is actually one of the biggest reasons that I expanded the instructional staff (within reason) when I got my gig! People are my #1 resource and if I could get more great educators in front of my kids (driving down that teacher:student ratio) the better they would get, faster. (especially because I am a trumpet player. I do my best with WW's but I am no savant!)

I WISH it just came down to the quality of teaching because then every group in Illinois would be box 4 and 5 all the time - but the truth of the matter is that there are SO MANY things that come in and happen before/during/after the education that also change things! If it was just education, the easiest way to adjudicate that would to be to have everyone march the same musical and visual package to directly compare the levels of teaching.

This is not to downplay the impact of the educators of our state in any way shape or form - there are just a LOT of things that go into it!

That is more or less what I had in mind, but thank you for reminding me of the staff element. In my experience, my program was particularly successful, but our director did teach K-12 with only the middle school director to help him during marching band. This year, they had a director change, so it was a down year, but more staff was brought on, so hopefully that turns around quickly.

I think another thing out of the director's control is the will of the student's to get better. I know when I was in band, the level of care between students was all over the place. I'm sure that's a reality all over the state, as well.