Trajectory Of 2016 DCI Scores

Analyzing the score trajectory of the 2016 DCI season shows some very interesting trends in how the summer went for certain corps.

Jun 10, 2017 by Michael Gilley

After every show in the parking lot, you see a common occurrence of pods of instructors huddled together listening to judges tapes. They are analyzing the comments, evaluating the judges' sheets, and discussing what are the moves they can make to improve their show. Then, they retreat to their respective staff buses to begin building their rehearsal plans.

Almost every single night, whether they have a show or not, this is the life of a drum corps staff. Asking themselves, "How do we get better?"

So it's fairly easy to see why the scores have such a steady improvement over the course of the summer. Just take a look at this plot graph that represents all of the World Class Corps' scores for the 2016 DCI season.

null

One of the most telling trends is the remarkably similar trajectory of the scores across all of the corps. From their first show to their last, corps averaged an improvement of 21.468 points over the course of the season. The corps with the single highest improvement in score in 2016 was Carolina Crown, who jumped a total of 25.288. Next closest to them with an improvement of 25.138 were the Blue Knights.

Given that the first contest was on June 23 and the season concluded on August 13, a span of 51 days, the average daily improvement of a corps was 0.421 points. If you think of it terms of per week, that is 2.947 points.

Another interesting trend just by looking at this chart is level of fluctuation in scores from night to night. The scores tend to have more fluctuation for corps who finished in the 10-24 placements than those corps who were trending towards a top 10 finish. The score trajectory was even more stable for those corps finishing in the top 3.

One caveat to that stabilized trajectory was Carolina Crown early in the season. In a five day span, Crown went from a 76.850 to a 74.600 back up to a 76.600. Then, 48-hours later they dipped to a 73.900. But, following a couple of rehearsal days they returned with a 77.800 and continued on to a bronze medal at the 2016 DCI World Championships.

So how will the 2017 trajectory of scores look? Only time will tell. The season gets kicked off on June 22 with the 2017 DCI Tour Premier in Indianapolis. But be sure to check out the DCI Spring Training Finale on June 20 in which the Cavaliers and the Blue Stars will both be performing exclusively on FloMarching.

How to Watch

ON TV: Available on Roku and Apple TV 4 -- download the FloSports app now.
STREAMING: Only on FloMarching with a PRO subscription. A yearly PRO subscription provides access to ALL FloSports sites. Join Now