Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps finish 3rd

The dream of pulling off an upset victory fell just short Saturday night for the Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps.

At the Drum Corps International world championships in Indianapolis, the Cavaliers placed third, behind The Cadets of Bergen County, N.J., who won their first world title since 2005, and the two-time defending champions, the Blue Devils of Concord, CA, who finished second.

The finals took place before 20,000 fans at Lucas Oil Stadium. It was less than 10 miles from the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis, where high winds came through during the Sugarland concert, killing five and leaving dozens injured.

“If we hadn't been inside a dome, we would have been in big trouble,” said Craig Rasin, board member with the Cavaliers. “Corps members were just getting off their buses and coming in out of the elements, when the storm came through.”

Russell Wharton, a bass drummer and 2008 Naperville North High School graduate, says that despite the Cavaliers' third-place finish, corps members came away from their final banquet on Sunday elated.

“To us, the scores and what the judges decide and what other corps do, doesn't matter,” said Wharton, who leaves today for band camp at Texas Christian University, where he is a music education major.

“Unlike virtually any other sport, drum corps is one activity where you can't play defense,” he added. “You can only play offense. You can only go out there and put out the best show that you can do.”

Wharton says the 150 members of the corps thought they nailed it, beginning with the quarterfinals Thursday night.

“We came off the field with an overwhelming feeling of elation,” he adds.

They called their original program “XtraordinarY” for its intense musical movements, but especially for its Cirque-du-Soleil type choreography.

The third section, called “Jungle Tango,” had the tenor drummers suspended upside down — held up by the contrabass players — as they played, followed by the some of the trumpet players being suspended while playing their horns.

“With its name, they wanted us to convey as many extraordinary ways as possible,” Wharton said. “So what they came up with were these crazy, over the top sequences that were really fun.”

Their ability to pull off the moves while playing the difficult drum sequences earned the percussion section first place overall, while the corps took second in music effect and third in visual effect and visual performance.

Trumpet player Thomas Duebner, of Mount Prospect, said that any awards they earned were secondary.

“We focus on the brotherhood,” said Duebner, a 2011 Prospect High School graduate who heads this week to band camp at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. “That pushes us more than any of the awards or rankings.”