Oddly, I found that I actually enjoyed most of the competition season this year. It was a lot of hard work, but it was fairly enjoyable. Part of this was simply due to the weather being rather better than we really deserved - despite this summer being rubbish I still made it through without ever getting soaked too badly.
Sadly, the results really didn't go our way. We played eleven events - three Majors and eight Minors. Ignoring the Grade 3 contests we played (where we never had any real chance), we gave fifteen performances (six in Grade 4 and nine in Grade 4A). Out of these, we were in the top half of the contest three times, we were dead centre twice, and we were last four times. In the three Majors we were last once, and third-from-last the other twice. At the Worlds, which was the only competition where we had to qualify, we failed to qualify. And, indeed we weren't even close.
All that said, it's worth noting that this year we had to put together an essentially all-new drum corps - only two of our snare drummers and one tenor drummer were with us last year (and the tenor drummer was out sick pretty much all of last year - good to see her back). We've also had a few changes to the pipe corps, though not as many.
I fully expect us to be downgraded for next year, which probably isn't the worst thing in the world. The timing is somewhat unfortunate, though, as we have a number of learners who are right on the cusp of joining the competing band, and so we're moving down just as they're moving up to join us. Oh well - can't be helped.
So, all in all I'm reasonably happy with our season. But by the same token, I'm glad it's over and I can get my weekends back!
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