DCI FORGE

DCI Forge is an independent analytics site covering Drum Corps International. Built by a lifelong band parent and analytics professional. Every piece is human-reviewed and edited before publication. Data verified against official DCI recaps.

Who is behind it

DCI Forge is written and run by Ken Lovell. Marching music runs three generations deep in the Lovell family, from the stands to the practice field to the living-room debates about who really won a show. That is the lens here: someone who has spent a lifetime around this activity as a fan and a band parent, paired with a working career in data and analytics.

The goal is to bring the kind of rigor you would expect from a serious analytics shop to a fan community that mostly trades in gut feel and message-board arguments, and to do it in plain language that a first-year band parent can follow.

Why it exists

DCI scores move for reasons, and most of those reasons are hidden inside the caption sheets that casual fans never see. DCI Forge exists to pull those reasons into the open: to show which caption actually decided a show, which corps are climbing on real gains versus a friendly panel, and where a season is likely to end up if current trends hold. Fan questions drive a lot of what gets covered.

What you will find here

Live scores and season standings, caption-by-caption breakdowns, judge and staff tracking, Monte Carlo season projections, and editorial analysis of why the numbers move the way they do, updated after every scored show, all season long.

How the data is sourced

Numbers come from publicly available DCI results. Every score is checked against the official DCI recap for that show, and when a second source such as a host circuit posts sheets first, that source is cross-checked before anything is published. Projections and caption math are computed from that verified score history, not from opinion. Where a figure is still awaiting confirmation, it is marked as such rather than presented as final.

How the writing is made

Editorial analysis is written and curated by the desk, with AI-assisted research and drafting tools. The reads, the calls, and the conclusions are human editorial judgment, checked against the verified score history before anything is published. Nothing goes out unreviewed.

Corrections policy

We will get things wrong, and when we do we fix them in the open. Early in the 2026 season an automated ingest pulled the wrong scores for a show in Annapolis. We caught it, corrected the record, and hardened the pipeline so the same class of error could not repeat. That is the standard: verify first, correct fast, and never quietly paper over a mistake. Spot something off? Tell us and we will look.

The podcast and newsletter

The DCIForge Report newsletter goes out the morning after shows with the results, the projection shifts, and the caption reads that mattered. The podcast turns the same analysis into a short two-host recap you can listen to on the drive. Both are free, both are assembled from the verified score data on this site, and both are reviewed before they go out. Every newsletter and episode passes through human review before publication.

Who we are

DCI Forge is a KLeo Forge LLC property. We are an independent publication and are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Drum Corps International or any participating corps.

Questions or corrections? Reach us at [email protected].