This weekend, a whole host of top percussion and winds groups converged on Kettering Fairmont High School in Dayton, Ohio, for the WGI Dayton Regional, one of the early marquee events of the 2019 season. The competition featured former champions and returning finalists from multiple classes, and plenty of intriguing storylines.

Here are a few of the key competitive takeaways from the weekend’s action.

Read the full, group-by-group live blog of WGI Dayton Regional finals.

Penalties Aside, X and MCM Are For Real

Of course, it’s not a huge surprise that Rhythm X and Music City Mystique are impressing early in the season—the two seem to grace the PIW top 5 year-in and year-out. But, their race for first at the WGI Dayton Regional was unexpectedly affected by penalties in both prelims and finals, all against Rhythm X, combining for nearly nine total points.

In prelims, MCM came out with a lead of 4.25; all but 0.05 of that came on X’s purported timing penalty. Despite another penalty in finals, this one totaling 4.45 points, Rhythm X closed that gap to 2.8 points, effectively beating its Nashville-based opponent by a solid 1.65 before deductions.

Rhythm X’s main advantage came in music, in which the Ohio group held a lead of 0.70, while outdoing Music City Mystique in all other captions by much slimmer margins. X has plenty more of its show on the floor, so it’ll be interesting to see how this race develops when, 1) Mystique completes its production and 2) Rhythm X works out the kinks in setup and teardown.

For reference—last year, at the same event, Rhythm X left with a lead of 1.05 and defeated Music City Mystique by just shy of three points at the end of the season. The inverse was true in 2017, as MCM turned a slim lead in early February into nearly a four-point gap at Finals. It’s early, but this event has consistently been a high quality read on these two headliners in recent years.

Victor J. Andrew is back, tops deep ‘A’ Class list

The Tinley Park, Illinois program has consistently found itself amongst top competitors in both PSA and PSO in recent seasons, and is the proud owner of PSA gold medals from 2014 and 2016, and last year’s PSO bronze.

By the end of this past weekend, Victor J. Andrew’s lead over the pack was nearly five points.

Their show is impressively designed and impeccably performed, so it’s not hard to see why. PSA can be hard to get a read on this early in the season because there are just so many groups that will compete in this class at the World Championships, but it’s hard to imagine Victor J. Andrew not being among the elite tier once again when April rolls around.

Out of 15 groups, though, there was plenty of quality competition from top to bottom. 

Bellbrook, the only returning WGI finalist outside of Victor J. Andrew in this weekend’s pack, actually finished in fifth place, behind Beavercreek (80.025), Milford (79.900) and Sycamore (77.950).

It’s hard to say what the cause is for that but it does mean a closer competition for Scholastic A groups in the Tri-State area.

INov8, ConneXus come out strong in PIW debut

INov8 Winter Percussion—which transitioned into World Class after a Top 5 finish in PIO in 2018—came out firing in Dayton to the tune of a top-three finish and a score of 78.800, which put it within five points of Music City Mystique.

Maybe this is a bit of extrapolation, but at finals last year, Cap City Percussion finished at about the same distance behind Mystique and took 13th place. It may not mean much—of course, numbers will spread out with the inclusion of a larger pack of competitors—but at the very least, it probably means INov8 won’t go down lightly in its first World Class go-around.

ConneXus was pretty competitive as well, finishing just 0.75 behind INov8 and pushing into the top three in Music Effect; the group actually defeated INov8 by 0.25 points in prelims before falling into fourth in finals.

Again, it’s early to make predictions—it's literally one of the first percussion regionals. But it wouldn’t be that surprising, based on these numbers, to see these two contending for a finalist position at World Championships.

Scholastic World trio make a statement

Centerville was very impressive and didn’t even come close to the top two in its class this weekend. That’s how good these three were.

Centerville’s (12th in WGI 2018 finals) third-place score of 75.500 is nothing to scoff at. But, Lebanon and Walled Lake Central, the former of which took ninth last year, came out with even more oomph.

Lebanon came out on top by just shy of a point in finals, leading the way in Music Effect, Visual Effect and Visual while trailing by just over a point in Music. Centerville took third in all four captions but was within striking distance in Visual, trailing less than a point out of first in that caption.

It wouldn’t be shocking if these three all took—or at least contended for—finals spots in April, despite Centerville’s gap from the top two. They still seemed to have plenty of its show left to complete, but it will easily be a fan favorite at UD Arena this April.