One of the first talking points after the DCI season comes to a close is the number of age-outs from corps to corps. This year, each corps in the top 12 will age-out between 20 and 60 members, with the lowest being 24 from Mandarins. Carolina Crown and Blue Devils both aged-out the most members this year, with a total of 55 members across each corps.

A lot of people think, including myself at one point, that the number of age-outs can be tied to a corps success from year-to-year. Fortunately, it's a bit more complex than that, and these numbers exhibit that concept pretty clearly in my opinion.

All of these numbers came straight from Drum Corps International, not the corps themselves.

Takeaways:

• Blue Devils once again have the most amount of age-outs with over a third of the corps performing their final season in 2018
• The Cadets, Carolina Crown, and Blue Devils were the only 3 corps to have more than 50 age-outs
• Mandarins had the fewest amount of age-outs (24), as they enter finals for the first time in the corps' history
• Bluecoats showed significant improvement from 2017 to 2018 in finals placement, despite having one of the largest age-out classes of 2017
• Meanwhile, Crossmen had the smallest age-out class in 2017 (of the finalist corps), and ended up going from 11th to 12th

*Correction: We initially reported 46 age-outs for Phantom Regiment. That has now been corrected to 38 thanks to a message from the corps' staff.