Lochgelly High School informed that the band’s “overall placing is affected” in World’s Novice Juvenile B
Winning the World Pipe Band Championship is a rare and treasured feat for any pipe band, and for young pipers and drummers just starting, it’s a memory that lasts a lifetime.
Several sources have confirmed that Lochgelly High School, the announced winners of the Juvenile B grade at the 2024 World Pipe Band Championship, have been informed that the band’s “overall placing is affected,” which suggests that, unless the first is somehow shared, the prize will be rescinded.
According to sources close to the matter, the band’s leaders have been asked to attend a Zoom meeting with RSPBA officials at 1 pm GMT on Thursday “to receive answers.”
It is unknown if Lochgelly High School received a prize in the 12-band final or if any of the announced prize list was correct. Twenty-eight bands competed in the grade.
In an earlier statement, the RSPBA included a complicated paragraph that attempted to explain the reason for the erroneous result: “The root cause of the error has been identified as facilitating a late notice change to the order of play for the NJB final and failing to ensure that all of the relevant documentation was updated to reflect this change.”
Apparently, the running order in both novice grades was changed on the Saturday of the World’s. According to an inside source, under RSPBA rules, such a change is not permitted unless the band(s) requesting the change play first, which did not happen at the competition.
An alleged failure to communicate the change in the running order created a disparity between the judges’ summary and the compilers’ spreadsheet. The proper process where an RSPBA director verbally communicates each band and judges’ individual scores to compilers who should then notice any discrepancy in the running order allegedly did not happen
Lochgelly High School in Fife, Scotland, is one of the world’s great teaching success stories. Its history goes back to the 1960s, when the great Bob Shepherd, then a teacher at the school, organized nearby Ballingry School’s first piping program.
Ballingry School and another local school at Auchterderran were closed, and the new Lochgelly High School took over the roles of the two former junior high schools.
Over the years, Lochgelly High School became the central piping and drumming teaching program in Fife, producing innumerable pipers and drummers. Some of them went on to band and solo success at the highest levels, including Reid Maxwell, Brian Donaldson, Steven Young, Paul Brown, Greig Canning, and Tom Brown.
The high school is also the venue for the annual Kingdom Thistle Piping & Drumming Competition.
Capital District of New York, the announced runner-up in the World’s Juvenile B competition, was asked for details about the matter, but a response was not received at publication time.
Outgoing RSPBA Chief Executive Colin Mulhern has not responded to a request for clarification on the organization’s statement issued on August 20th or details regarding the correct Juvenile 4B prize list.
The original article was updated at 17:55 ET on August 20, 2024.
Correct me if I am wrong. Regardless of the assumed playing order the judges “ judge” the band they hear and give points accordingly. So, that alone should be the basis of the result. The what’s and why’s of how the order of play was changed should not affect the judging.
The implication ( and I hope I am wrong) is that, if the judges thought they were judging a particular band, and judged based on the band’s name not the playing content that could affect the final placings in this scenario ?
The situation here should be that the judges were given summary sheets with the bands in play order that wasn’t updated. So upon filling out their placings, they would have placed whoever played 12th as 1st and 5th as 10th, etc. However, if the band that played in a given position was either slotted in or swapped with another band, their entire summary sheet could be incorrect.
So, in my example, imagine they were given a summary sheet with Band A playing 12th, which they placed 1st and Band B playing 5th and placing 10th. However, what they didn’t note on this sheet, was that the band that played 12th was actually Band A and the band that played 5th was actually Band B. As such, the scoresheet would correctly reflect the scores based on the order the bands played but not the names of the bands. So upon compiling the results, it would be a very easy and logical mistake to give the wrong placings to the wrong bands, unless someone knew what had happened.
In other words, the judges did judge each band based on their performances but were given faulty materials (placing sheets) to track their results. The error rests with the clerical side of the RSPBA not the judges, if this is the case.
All of that is assuming that oddly worded paragraph from the RSPBA is stating the above scenario.
1st to 10th is quite the mistake….