29th February 2000
Dagenham WGI Contest Report
Military style planning would be required for the European Winterguard International (WGI) Contest being held in Dagenham on Saturday 26th February. All three Guard would be competing plus the Senior Guard would, hopefully, be competing for a second time as part of the 6 units that would go forward into the evening Finals event. The day would be a little different to normal due to the fact that there was two panels of Judges, one panel (WGI) was made up of American, Dutch and 1 UK Judge and these were the scores that would be announced and counted on the day, while the other (DCUK) was the normal set of UK Judges whose scores would not be announced but would be used for the UK seeding process.
The first of our three units to compete was the Senior Guard, in the A Class Preliminaries. As well as 9 UK Guards there were also 4 Dutch units competing in this class and following a good display by the girls, including a revised ending with new larger flags, we are a little surprised to have dropped from our seeded position of first to 5th place (out of 13), just behind The Statesmen plus 3 of the Dutch Guards. Anyway the Guard had made Finals and would have a chance to possibly catch up as less than 2 points split the pack.
The Rugrats were next up, in the Cadet Class, and a much, much improved performance from their first show a month earlier. More scenery had been added as well as them being a lot more confident put them in joint 2nd Place.
Following on, and in the Junior Class, our Cadets put all the problems they had encountered at their first 3 contests behind them and performed a near perfect show which, although only placed 7th (out of 10), had them pushing the Guards above them, which included 2 Dutch units, very closely.
And so came the evening Finals. The Seniors performance saw a significant improvement from Prelims and hopes were high that things may come right. Unfortunately even though the Guard remain in 5th place they were the only unit to receive a lower score than the one in the morning!
A quick analysis of the two sets of judging sheets (the DCUK Panel did not judge the Finals event) saw that the Rugrats and Juniors increased their UK scores and were placed 3rd and 6th respectively by the DCUK Judges, which was only one place difference to the placing given by the WGI Judges. However while the WGI Judges placed the Seniors 5th the DCUK Panel still kept them in 1st Place but only just with The Statesmen snapping at their heels.
Another 2 week break and then all off to Worthing for the Southern Knights hosted contest on Sunday 12th March.