Monday, August 29, 2011

Competition Season 2011 Wash-up

It's been a hard season, and a fairly disappointing one at that. Our initial optimism, bolstered by a strong winter and an early success at Dunbar, quickly gave way to increasing despondency as the season wore on. We thought perhaps the Scottish Championships were a blip, caused by bad weather, but then the British Championships proved a repeat, and so it went.

Still, it wasn't all bad. The result at Annan's "Riding of the Marches" was fantastic. And the Development Band was the major success of the year, starting as just an idea, meeting some fairly nasty resistance, and finally being able to take the field. Them winning a prize on that first outing was a great achievement, far better than could reasonably have been hoped.

Ultimately, the big outcome of this season is positive. Although we did poorly in terms of the championship, we did record a solid, mid-table result. Perhaps more importantly, we got a sense of what the judges are actually looking for, and should hopefully have some idea on what we need to do in order to do better next year. I have some thoughts in that regard, but at this point they are premature - there are some significant issues that need to be cleared up before we can move on.

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