If you track the overall scores of just about every corps over the course of its summer, you will notice a pretty steady climb in scores. 

But if you look at the sub-captions such as GE (General Effect), Visual, Color Guard, Brass, and Percussion, you will notice they have a very similar trajectory as well.

R.O.I.

The "Rate Of Increase" (ROI) is something we use to track how corps are improving over the course of the summer. It's the daily average a corps' score might increase in any given category.

More specifically, if you look at the five sub-captions that are awarded caption awards at the end of the season, you will notice a similar steady climb.

To calculate ROI, you take the difference between first score and last score of the season, then divide that by the number of days between those two scores.

For instance, if a corps scored a 25.000 in GE at the first show of the season on June 22, it will score a 33.000 in GE at its final performance on Aug. 11. The eight-point difference is divided by the number of days (50 in this example), between the first show and the last.

That means that this corps will have averaged an increase in GE every day by 0.16 points over the course of those 50 days on tour.

2017 ROIs

Let's take a look at how each World Class corps fared in 2017. Keep in mind who the caption award winners were in 2017: Blue Devils (GE, Visual), Santa Clara Vanguard (Color Guard, Percussion), and Carolina Crown (Brass).