Clover Hill has 48 singer/dancers. Cabell Midland 45, Hurricane 48 Nitro 43-44(?). St C about 40-42, Ross (based on pic) 35. Not sure about Grove City
You cannot go by picture size. Clover Hill mixed was the largest group there followed by Clover Hill girls, Cabell Midland, Hurricane, St.C, Ross and then Nitro. The Showcats have lost several members due to various reasons and are currently 38 singer/dancers strong. Grove City, I believe was the smallest choir of the groups that were in the gym.
I talked to Grafton's director last night at the Poca competiton and he said that there was another mistake in Riverside's scores and that Jared McMillen from Grafton actually got Best Male Soloist.
Can anyone confirm this? I know it would mean a lot to him to see his name on here.
As someone that was involved with Clover Hill and present that weekend....I can say we never had a choice in what division we were placed in as I am sure the SingerDad can agree that St. Clairsville did not have a chance to request as well. Any competition we have ever entered we have been always asked to be placed in the large division. We competed in the division assigned to us and asked why but never got an answer. Clover Hill has always tried to expose their kids to the best groups in the nation and every year they try to have the most aggressive schedule possible.
There is no secret we have 48 singer dancers and a combo of 18 ... we filled out all paperwork that was asked and we were placed in that division. The only way possible someone put us in class A is when we took our Picture we had only 38 people in the picture because of ill kids.
As to reference of our "budget" just like any show choir the students do many fundraisers to be able to compete and they unfortunately do not live in an area that saturated with show choir as many other areas are....therefore they have to travel at least 6 hours to compete with the average between 8-10 hours one way for any weekend they compete.
All choirs were awesome this past weekend!
Antwon, thanks for your input. Clover Hill is incredible. Your work speaks for itself, whether it's with our group or anyone else, and the kids love working with you.
This past weekend is over and done. Maybe I'm too competitive and missing the point on these competitions.
As someone that was involved with Clover Hill and present that weekend....I can say we never had a choice in what division we were placed in as I am sure the SingerDad can agree that St. Clairsville did not have a chance to request as well. Any competition we have ever entered we have been always asked to be placed in the large division. We competed in the division assigned to us and asked why but never got an answer. Clover Hill has always tried to expose their kids to the best groups in the nation and every year they try to have the most aggressive schedule possible.
There is no secret we have 48 singer dancers and a combo of 18 ... we filled out all paperwork that was asked and we were placed in that division. The only way possible someone put us in class A is when we took our Picture we had only 38 people in the picture because of ill kids.
As to reference of our "budget" just like any show choir the students do many fundraisers to be able to compete and they unfortunately do not live in an area that saturated with show choir as many other areas are....therefore they have to travel at least 6 hours to compete with the average between 8-10 hours one way for any weekend they compete.
Clover Hill has 48 singer/dancers. Cabell Midland 45, Hurricane 48 Nitro 43-44(?). St C about 40-42, Ross (based on pic) 35. Not sure about Grove City
Agreed, yet somehow Clover Hill was in the smaller group (A) and Hurricane and Cabell Midland were in the larger (AA). I'm more confused now...
Was Clover Hill not the largest group with regard to choir size? I am asking in complete honesty. I firmly believe they were mis-categorized, whether we are talking enrollment or group size.
Clover Hill has 48 singer/dancers. Cabell Midland 45, Hurricane 48 Nitro 43-44(?). St C about 40-42, Ross (based on pic) 35. Not sure about Grove City
One last question... Is the point deduction for time limits an empty threat, or are they assessed?
With this past weekend, it was not put into motion, because the host school's stage crew was new to setting up risers, and half of the schools had no place to unload equipment in the school. So, the host school opted to do the best they could with time.
Was Clover Hill not the largest group with regard to choir size? I am asking in complete honesty. I firmly believe they were mis-categorized, whether we are talking enrollment or group size.
I am not sure. I know they gave their numbers and the contest was to put them in the correct division accordingly.
In my professional opinion, and this was a big topic of conversation -- these divisions were a step towards the right direction. I am a fan of the classes being based on choir size. I think school enrollment has nothing to do with how much interest there is in a choral program. Plus, a group of 25 will never sing like a group of 50, regardless if they are from a school of the same population. I think choir size is the way to go. I'd love to see more competitions divided like Riverside, just a bit more organized and on-time.
Was Clover Hill not the largest group with regard to choir size? I am asking in complete honesty. I firmly believe they were mis-categorized, whether we are talking enrollment or group size.
Thanks for the input, this is all healthy discussion. Specifically here, in this situation, the Largest Group, that I had seen all day was in the 2nd largest tier.
I had heard rumors about their budget, but will not refer to an amount here because it's all here say to me. I can say that they had a dedicated tractor trailer parked outside. It was amazing.
My question to anyone from fusionfest would be how they were not in the largest grouping. They have an enrollment of over 2,000 students and had the largest choir I had seen all day.
Also, I will perhaps speculate that the midstream change in venue for finals caused logistical issues for a school with multiple groups competing for finals.
In my professional opinion, and this was a big topic of conversation -- these divisions were a step towards the right direction. I am a fan of the classes being based on choir size. I think school enrollment has nothing to do with how much interest there is in a choral program. Plus, a group of 25 will never sing like a group of 50, regardless if they are from a school of the same population. I think choir size is the way to go. I'd love to see more competitions divided like Riverside, just a bit more organized and on-time.
Just to add another voice to the conversation - I agree with Alex in that, from my experience, this is one area in which the West Coast has absolutely gotten it right. Essentially in their system, group separation comes down to skill level and nothing else. As has been noted, you can be a giant school with a small music program (or vice-versa), and I personally think dividing by school size is the WORST way to separate groups. Choir size is better, but it still doesn't account for the fact that just because you have 40 students in your group, you may not have the support or resources of another choir in the same category.
When separating by skill level, all of the novice groups compete together, all of the intermediate groups compete together, and all of the advanced groups compete together. Simple. You choose where you belong. Some people will bring up the fact that this allows a group to compete at a lower level than they should (say a group that should be advanced but competes in intermediate) just to place higher. And while that's technically possible, it's pretty obvious where most groups belong. There's no honor in sitting in a division you clearly outperform just to take the trophy every year. Likewise, if you're a more modest-level group in a rebuilding phase, it's a little silly to ask you to compete where you're clearly outmatched. It shuffles out pretty quickly on its own and I'm sure the directors will discuss if a group is squatting in a division they shouldn't be.
Also, that's why you have divisions in the first place and don't take groups from every tier to finals. If you're good enough to make finals, then you belong in the upper division to begin with. Thus, sitting in a lower division just for an easy "win" would prevent you from moving on to the evening session and I think that alone would fix any problems with groups intentionally moving down (which rarely happened on the west coast even without finals in place).
This is a semantic nightmare.
That's partly the website's fault. From what I understand, this event was a bit of a hot mess, but they didn't describe their divisions as "tiers" (we do). The tier system is in place to help promote uniformity across regions (for instance, calling a division "5A" is utterly meaningless to most people), and also to denote what's going on. In sports, "Varsity" denotes the top level and "Junior Varsity" denotes the mid level, with a "Freshman" level sometimes below that. In show choir, some events have a "Varsity" division that is at a lower level than their "Open" division... which isn't open at all (you have to be an advanced mixed group to be in it). Talk about a semantics nightmare. When you view the events on showchoir.com, all you need to know is that Tier I is the highest level, Tier II the next highest, and so on. It's the same for every single event in the database.
In this situation, they had two sets of finals, so Tier I represented the higher tier of finals and Tier II represented the lower tier of finals. It isn't often that you have 4 divisions and then 2 separate sets of finals and 2 divisions which are each eligible for a separate set of finals and... well, I think you get the picture. Yes, it would make more sense to just have two divisions to start with (an "advanced" and an "intermediate," if you will), and then just let them each have their own set of finals. That's assuming you want two different sets of finals. And obviously they didn't run this in a very conventional way, but the website still needs some way to display the information. So I won't take credit for the decisions they made at this competition, but I do concede that sometimes the website isn't the clearest when things start to get really complex within a particular event itself. This is one reason why SOME sort of uniformity across the country would be nice, even if it is nothing more than a way to separate and list groups. We do our best to suggest a system that seems to be practical, but we can't force anyone to adopt it.
Of course we always welcome discussion on the topic - in fact we encourage it - this is a perfect example of something that may have not worked as well as desired, but also a perfect opportunity to adopt a method that may offer a more positive solution.
Just to add another voice to the conversation, I agree with Alex in that from my experience this is one area in which the west coast has absolutely gotten it right. Essentially all it comes down to is that groups are separated by skill level and nothing else. As has been noted, you can be a giant school with a small music program (or vice-versa), and I personally think dividing by school size is the WORST way to separate groups. Choir size is better, but it still doesn't take account for the fact that just because you have 40 students in your group, you may not have the resources or the support of another choir in the same category.
When separating by skill level, all of the novice groups compete together, all of the intermediate groups compete together, and all of the advanced groups compete together. Simple. Some people will bring up the fact that this allows a group to compete at a lower level than they should (say a group that should be advanced but competes in intermediate) just to place higher. And while that's technically possible, it's pretty obvious where most groups belong. There's no honor in sitting in a division you clearly outperform and just taking the trophy every year. Likewise, if you're a more modest-level group in a rebuilding phase, it's a little silly to ask you to compete where you're clearly outmatched. It shuffles out pretty quickly and I'm sure the directors will discuss if a group is squatting in a division they shouldn't be.
Also, that's why you have divisions in the first place and don't take groups from every tier to finals. If you're good enough to make finals, then you belong in the upper division to begin with. Thus, sitting in a lower division just for an easy "win" would prevent you from moving on to the evening session and I think that alone would fix any problems with groups intentionally moving down (which rarely happened on the west coast even without finals in place).
This is a semantic nightmare.
That's partly the website's fault. From what I understand, this event was a bit of a hot mess, but they didn't describe their divisions as "tiers" (we do). The tier system is in place to help promote uniformity across regions (for instance, calling a division "5A" is utterly meaningless in some places), and also to denote what's going on. In sports, "Varsity" denotes the top level and "Junior Varsity" denotes the mid level, with a "Freshman" level sometimes below that. In show choir, some events have a "Varsity" division that is at a lower level than their "Open" division... which isn't open at all (you have to be an advanced mixed group to be in it). Talk about a semantics nightmare. When you view the events on showchoir.com, all you need to know is that Tier I is the highest level, Tier II the next highest, and so on. It's the same for every event in the database.
In this situation, they had two sets of finals, so Tier I represented the higher tier of finals and Tier II represented the lower tier of finals. It isn't often that you have 4 divisions and then 2 separate sets of finals and 2 divisions are each eligible for a separate set of finals and... well, I think you get the picture. Yes, it would make more sense to just have two divisions to start with (an "advanced" and an "intermediate," if you will), and then just let them each have their own set of finals. That's assuming you want two different sets of finals. And obviously they didn't run this in a very conventional way, but the website still needs some way to display the information. So I won't take credit for whatever happened at this competition, but I do concede that sometimes the website isn't the clearest when things start to get really complex within a particular event itself. This is one reason why SOME sort of uniformity across the country would be nice, even if it is nothing more than a way to separate and list groups. We do our best to suggest a system that seems to be practical, but we can't force anyone to adopt it.
Of course we always welcome discussion on the topic - in fact we encourage it - this is a perfect example of something that may have not worked as well as desired at a competition, but also a perfect opportunity to adopt a method that may be a more positive solution.
There were Tiers I, II, III, and IV, but then Tiers III and IV combined for a Tier II of finals, and Tiers I and II combined for a Tier I of finals. This is a semantic nightmare. I'll bet so many people were confused by the fact that Tier II during the day and Tier II during the night was a completely different set of groups. Why not just have only two tiers to start with? Just so we can give more people a pat on the back?
Secondly, if they are having two separate fields in finals, why not have two separate finals in two separate venues? More people would be able to watch more groups.
So there was a finals and a prelims being held at the same time? Why not just have one finals?
Riverside tried the two venues approach this year - which a handful of other competitions do - and it simply just didn't work out. Two venues, meaning one for the small choirs and one for the large choirs. ("Small" and "Large" also seem to be relatively ambiguous and most folks seem unsure of how Riverside defined those).
In prelims, they had the small choirs in the auditorium and the large choirs in the gymnasium. They were planning to have 5 small finalists for Tier II Finals and planning to have 5 large finalists for Tier I Finals. However, where it got weird with the schedule is that they were planning on having both Tier I and Tier II Finals in the same venue, as in 10 finalists in a row in the same venue. The prelims competition ran late (in both venues) coupled with an apparent confusing awards ceremony where scores were messed up resulting in further delay.
As a result, as Antwon said, the directors had a get-together and agreed to eliminate Tier I Finals and leave the large choir results based on prelims scores while allowing the opportunity for the small choirs to have their moment to shine in finals. So to answer your question, no prelims and finals were not held at the same time and yes they did just decide to have one finals. It looks like Riverside unfortunately just couldn't handle the volume and pressure of a two venue competition.
edit: For clarification in my post: with large choirs I'm referring to the gymnasium choirs: Tier I, Tier II, and Women's divisions while small choirs I'm referring to the auditorium choirs: Tier III and Tier IV.
So there was a finals and a prelims being held at the same time? Why not just have one finals?
I understand how it might be attractive to separate schools based on school size, program size, type of choir, and level of choir at the state level. However, even within the same state there are such large differences in the types of programs that regulating them at the state level makes zero sense.
Then there are sparsely show choir populated states like Minnesota (we only have 9 regularly competing schools) it wouldn't make any sense to regulate on the state level here, either. For the most part, our schools are relatively the same size, and have at least one prep group - all except North Saint Paul. Also, we only have 4 competitions all year long, so most of us compete out of state for the majority of our season. Regulating things at the state level would make it much more difficult to compete across state lines.
First of all, thank you for the detailed post. I see the frustration and on many aspects agree with what you are saying. However, I do disagree on your claim that competitions in the Show Choir world should adopt the State Athletic Associations' way of categorizing schools.
There are many examples of how a smaller school (enrollment) can out-perform a larger school. Out west in California, Arcadia is one of the biggest schools regarding enrollment, and they consistently choose to compete in Tier II. There are several examples of larger schools being beaten by smaller ones just this weekend. In my opinion, the California Tier system should be adopted because it makes the most sense when it comes to a subjective art form like Show Choir. It isn't a sport and shouldn't be treated like one (that's not to say it shouldn't count for gym credit and also get school funding though). Since singing and dancing is adjudicated by people (who believe it or not have biased opinions sometimes!) and not a timer or scoreboard, it should absolutely be up to the director as to which Tier they compete in.
In the Midwest (somewhat excluding Iowa) we have a cluster of bad classifications. Most of them literally don't matter one bit, because most to all of the groups are eligible for finals besides single-gender groups. If you're going to make a classification system, might as well make it so that each group in that Tier is competing only against themselves, and if some groups don't like it, then have them compete with the others!
Anyhow, that's just my two cents. This competition definitely had it's problems, but we all have to understand how complicated they are to put together. The large mixed groups were very humble to give up their finals performances, and I'm sure everyone had a blast yesterday (which is what really matters).
Thanks for the input. We were at Riverside 3 years ago and had a great time. I really don't want to sound like sour grapes at all. I don't have an issue with any of the squads selected for finals. They were all fantastic.
I'm just hoping that in the future there are standardized, posted measures that explain why choirs are placed into respective divisions.
I waited for a while to keep my comments more on the reserved side. Let me first say how amazing Clover Hill was. Clearly head and shoulders above everyone else to the point of absurdity. This show seemed a little below their level.
I am not certain how the choirs were placed into the groups they were in. Not sure how one school with an enrollment of over 2,000 and a choir with more participants (including a 15 piece brass section alone) would not be considered as a AA size group?
In my humble opinion, school enrollment should be he ONLY way to divide the choirs into groups. Schools with big enrollments and larger budgets who are unable to support a larger show choir are given a free pass when competing at smaller levels.
Small schools, with large groups, have to compete up with schools 4-5 times their size because they punch above their weight. Our group represents literally 10% of our student enrollment. Imagine if the same applied to the larger schools...set it up by enrollment and let the large, super funded groups flash their dominance in finals.
This is one area where State Athletic Associations have it right. Competitions should follow.
First of all, thank you for the detailed post. I see the frustration and on many aspects agree with what you are saying. However, I do disagree on your claim that competitions in the Show Choir world should adopt the State Athletic Associations' way of categorizing schools.
There are many examples of how a smaller school (enrollment) can out-perform a larger school. Out west in California, Arcadia is one of the biggest schools regarding enrollment, and they consistently choose to compete in Tier II. There are several examples of larger schools being beaten by smaller ones just this weekend. In my opinion, the California Tier system should be adopted because it makes the most sense when it comes to a subjective art form like Show Choir. It isn't a sport and shouldn't be treated like one (that's not to say it shouldn't count for gym credit and also get school funding though). Since singing and dancing is adjudicated by people (who believe it or not have biased opinions sometimes!) and not a timer or scoreboard, it should absolutely be up to the director as to which Tier they compete in.
In the Midwest (somewhat excluding Iowa) we have a cluster of bad classifications. Most of them literally don't matter one bit, because most to all of the groups are eligible for finals besides single-gender groups. If you're going to make a classification system, might as well make it so that each group in that Tier is competing only against themselves, and if some groups don't like it, then have them compete with the others!
Anyhow, that's just my two cents. This competition definitely had it's problems, but we all have to understand how complicated they are to put together. The large mixed groups were very humble to give up their finals performances, and I'm sure everyone had a blast yesterday (which is what really matters).
Riverside Fusion Fest 2016
and then just let them each have their own set of finals. That's assuming you want two different sets of finals. And obviously they didn't run this in a very conventional way, but the website still needs some way to display the information. So I won't take credit for the decisions they made at this competition, but I do concede that sometimes the website isn't the clearest when things start to get really complex within a particular event itself. This is one reason why SOME sort of uniformity across the country would be nice, even if it is nothing more than a way to separate and list groups. We do our best to suggest a system that seems to be practical, but we can't force anyone to adopt it. 
