In the final Bands of America regional event in Texas before bands descend on San Antonio, James Bowie picked up a regional victory on the campus of Baylor University, earning first place out of 29 at the BOA Waco Regional Championship. 

That said, a couple of key close races emerged among the finalist pool. 

The takeaways from Waco:

Tight Top 10

The 10 finalists as a whole at this weekend’s event in Waco were separated by just about 10 points, with James Bowie leading the way with a score of 87.450. James Bowie took top marks in visual performance and general effect, but lost the music performance caption to Keller, which took second overall with a mark of 85.600. 

Almost the entirety of that overall separation between the two came in general effect, where James Bowie led by an astounding 1.8 points over the entire field. 

The competition was close for the last spot among the top three, as Waxahachie earned bronze status with a score of 84.300, fending off James Martin (fourth, 84.000), who has already had marked success this season, thanks to leads in general effect and visual performance. Waxahachie also earned the overall AAA championship title at the Waco event. Seven Lakes rounded out the event’s top five with a score of 82.930, well ahead of sixth-place Aledo, which earned 80.850. Seven Lakes also scored ahead of James Martin in general effect.

Burleson Centennial (seventh, 79.000) very narrowly beat out Dripping Springs (eighth, 78.800) for seventh place; Burleson Centennial’s resounding lead in the music performance caption made up for strong showings by Dripping Springs in the other two captions. Burleson Centennial was also the only band to move up from Prelims to Finals, erasing what had been a deficit of 1.05 to Dripping Springs in the early round of competition.

Wrapping up the group of finalists were J.J. Pearce (ninth, 77.900), and Richland (10th, 77.300), the latter of which scored as high as eighth in music performance. That said, Richland had a relatively close call to get into the finals; its prelims score of 75.900 was just a quarter of a point ahead of that of Lake Ridge (11th, 75.650).

Other Key Notes

• Right behind Lake Ridge was probably the tightest pack of competitors, as four bands were separated by just half a point, and all of them were within two points of the finals cutoff. W.E. Boswell led the way in 12th with a score of 74.700, fending off Mansfield (13th, 74.570) by just over a tenth of a point. Forney (14th, 74.400) was just under two tenths behind that, while Sachse (15th, 74.200) kept things close thanks to strong music performance scores. 
• Forney was also the event’s AA champion; the title for the "A" classification went to Robinson with a score of 60.350.
• Saturday’s competition was just the second all season at which no bands scored lower than 60. The only other event to hold this distinction was the West Texas Regional Championship, held in Midland, Texas on October 12.