The second decade of the 21st century couldn’t have had a more memorable drum corps conclusion.

2019 was rife with some of the most competitive intrigue the drum corps activity has seen in years. Beyond that, it was chock full of memorable designs from top to bottom.

Forget even just the top of the leaderboard. All the way down the standings, corps reached new milestones and set new standards on the DCI Summer Tour.

Could 2019 go down as one of the most memorable years in DCI history? Perhaps. Here are five reasons why.

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Competitive madness at the top

Bluecoats



An argument could be made that the race between 2019’s top two was the closest in well over a decade.

Depending how you quantify it, of course, you have to go back nearly 15 years to find a more compelling summer-long race between two top corps than the one seen in 2019. In terms of average margin and head-to-head win percentage of the eventual second-place finisher, no race in that span comes close.

No, not 2015. Blue Devils (1st) won 14 out of 17 meetings with Carolina Crown (2nd).

No, not 2011. The Cadets (1st) won 14 out of 23 meetings with Blue Devils (2nd).

No, not even 2008. Phantom Regiment’s (1st) only win over Blue Devils (2nd) in 17 meetings came on Finals night. An argument could be made the final result was more compelling, but the start-to-finish race was quite one-sided until the waning moments of the season.

The 2019 Blue Devils only won five of their 12 meetings with Bluecoats, with two of those coming on the final two days of the season.

On top of holding a winning head-to-head record, Bluecoats also became the first second-place corps in quite some time to hold an advantage in average margin against that year’s winner — Bluecoats outscored Blue Devils by an average of 0.110 in those 12 matchups.

The last top-two race that compares? Somewhat surprisingly, 2005. Despite The Cadets setting one of four all-time 99-or-better final scores and winning that summer’s Finals by more than 1.5 points over The Cavaliers, the Rosemont corps actually won seven of 13 meetings with its Allentown opponent, and held a noticeable lead in the “average margin” category.

But even so, Blue Devils’ race with Bluecoats in 2019 was quite the anomaly.

A couple of other standout facts in that regard:

The 2019 Blue Devils are the only corps to win a gold medal without earning top score at a “regional” in the current century.

The 2019 Blue Devils are the first corps to win a gold medal despite never beating that season’s silver medalist by more than three tenths of a point, at any time, since Phantom Regiment in 2008.

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