The Countdown

Mid-July, and the countdown to the big contests has begun. Ex-member Gord Perry, now P-M of the Fredericton Society of St. Andrews Pipe Band has begun his Maxville countdown. Two weeks to work on the contest beard. In 2008, the CRPB did that with moustaches. Tons of fun, although the band photos are still a bit gruesome. I've seen the countdowns to the Worlds, and countdowns to the flights, and bands are all aflutter about the big days ahead. The predictions have been flowing on the chat sites for some time, and everything is building for the annual massive blowout that is the month of August in the pipe band world.

The CRPB has been working diligently to raise its game, despite having a few weeks off a major band weekend, we have accomplished a fair bit in terms of player and instrument readiness. This weekend we got together and practiced over two days. As always: a great time, many laughs, and a lot accomplished musically. Took delivery of the final jackets/vests, marking the completion of a 100% "re-uniform" project that started in 2009.

Band members are looking forward to the experience of playing in Scotland once again, and also to hearing a lot of great music. Not sure how many days till we go, but I do know I'm looking forward to playing. Tis the season.

What Can You Learn from Football?

If you live in Canada, you are likely aware that this past weekend was the annual Grey Cup game in Calgary, the championship game of football for the Canadian Football League. And if you live in Saskatchewan, or are one of the many fans of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, you will be painfully aware of their near-victory, and the stunning loss with no time on the clock.

The painful story of the loss is that Saskatchewan took a dumb penalty on a last-second field goal attempt, which the opposition team had missed. The "too many men on the field" penalty allowed the team to re-kick, and they scored, putting them ahead by one point, and giving them the Grey Cup Championship. Across media of every type, fans and commentators are moaning about or rejoicing those last few seconds of the game. I think that the game was lost much earlier.

In piping and pipe band competitions, it is common knowledge that if you leave the door open in some way [note error, missed attack, saggy D, over-blown F/G, missed break] a fellow competitor—or maybe a judge—will walk through it, and you will lose. It doesn't always happen, but you approach the massed bands thinking it's quite likely.

So, when the Riders missed that field goal in the first quarter of play, I wondered if those missed three points would come back to bite them. And, after Montreal's last touchdown, and the missed two-point conversion, all the Riders needed was to move the ball for a couple of first downs, and they'd have won. They didn't. With the game in hand, they failed to get the yards they needed, and really [it has to be said]: Montreal deserved a shot at a last-minute field goal.

And even after all that, the Riders had the chance to win because the Montreal kicker shanked the ball [again] and missed, giving the Riders the last-minute win...until the penalty was called. My point is: that game could have been won by the Roughriders at several points before the last-second kick, and had they executed fully, Montreal would not have had the chance for that kick, or if they had, it would not have been enough points to win.

Contests, be they football or bagpipes, are about controlling all the things you can, as well as you can. When you make mistakes, you shouldn't expect to win. Don't blame this one on the 13th man, the game had slipped out of the Riders' grasp already.

This has two important "take aways" for piping. First, prepare for competition by focussing on all the things in your control, and not thinking about the things you can't control. And second, when things go wrong, think about the things that you could have done differently, rather than all the other stuff that might have affected the outcome.

Tough stuff. At the end of the day, the "near wins" are the hardest losses to take.

Benchmarks of Progress ~ Success is in the Details

A week has passed since the Moose Jaw and Regina Highland games, and after recovering fully from the effort, have had time to think about the progress since Brandon, and especially last year. In 2008, we elected to "perform" at Regina and Moose Jaw Games because we only had one MSR fully operational, and people were still memorizing the medley! This year, we had all the music going, and are making a better job of it than in some time. We even managed the band's first event win since 2006! Still, a long way to go.

Band members should take some pride in what has been done so far, and they also need to prepare themselves for what is coming. We are at the point where we have accomplished a lot of good things. We have three solid contest sets, and people are performing pretty well, on good instruments. What has to happen now, is all those "deal-breaker" details need to be sorted: wee note errors, corping and unison issues, sketchy Ds and Fs in the jigs, blowing on Low A. Missing and incorrect execution equals unison issues. It all counts. It can all be heard.

As we prepare for the big contests this summer, we need to make an extra effort to work on the small stuff, to get to as many practices as possible, and to take the devil out of the details. It's our next big challenge.