page_title: Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of one of the member buses, taken at the Cookeville, TN DCI contest in 2006.
context_page_description: Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps is a competitive junior drum and bugle corps. Based in Santa Clara, California, United States, the Santa Clara Vanguard is one of the thirteen founding member corps of Drum Corps International and a DCI World Champion, having won the title for the seventh time in 2018.
context_section_description: On the evening of March 6, 1967, citing differences of opinion in the artistic direction of the Sparks Drum & Bugle Corps, its parents support group voted to return the corps to its former activity as a drum and bell corps with majorettes. After the vote, three dissident adults took the corps' members aside and asked them if they preferred to continue as a drum and bugle corps or to become a drum and bell corps. After the members declared for drum and bugle, their parents immediately started a new booster club to support the new corps. Gail Royer, a local elementary school music teacher and a judge for American Legion music competitions, who had been the Sparks' music instructor, was named as the director for the new corps. The new corps waited until its members met for rehearsal the following week to select a name. After discussing and rejecting several possible names, the corps chose: Santa Clara Vanguard.
  Only one week after its founding, the newly christened corps marched in and won its first parade, San Francisco's St. Patrick's Day Parade. The unit's major trip of the 1967 season was to Southern California to compete in the Anaheim Kingsmen's second annual Festival of Music, placing fourth. At that show, Royer recruited Kingsmen instructors Pete Emmons and Fred Sanford to instruct the Vanguard color guard and drum line.   
  In 1968, the corps embarked on its first tour to the Midwest in order to measure itself against more experienced corps in full contests. Gail Royer was trying to prepare them for VFW Nationals in Philadelphia the following year. Although they did not place high at any of the competitions, the tour was a success because of the competition experience and the exposure to the national drum corps scene. On the local front, the SC Vanguard Color Guard beat the Anaheim Kingsmen in 1968 to win their first California Color Guard Circuit Championship, and the corps won its first standstill competition. The corps also won its first field show that year, on August 3, 1968, at the Anaheim Kingsmen's Festival of Music. Santa Clara Vanguard capped off its year by winning the first of many California State Open Championships.
  The Vanguard made its first trip to the East Coast in 1969.  At their first VFW Nationals in Philadelphia, the corps finished in thirteenth place of the sixty-three corps, just missing Finals. The members then visited Washington, D.C., where the corps played their musical program on the steps of the Capitol Building, and New York City.  In the corps' second "major" show of the season, SCV placed ninth of the forty-one corps in Class A at the U.S. Open in Lynn, Massachusetts. Santa Clara closed out the Sixties by beating every other major corps in the country in 1970; they lost to several corps, but repaid those losses with wins. Finances prevented the corps from attending VFW Nationals in Miami, but the corps traveled in their own automobiles to Portland, Oregon for the American Legion Nationals, where they defeated 21 mostly West Coast corps to win the 1970 American Legion Junior National Championship.
  In 1971, at the urging of Troopers founder Jim Jones and Cavaliers founder Don Warren, the Blue Stars, Cavaliers, Madison Scouts, Santa Clara Vanguard, and the Troopers formed the Midwest Combine.  This action was taken in reaction to the rigid rules of the American Legion and VFW (the primary rule makers and sponsors of both corps and shows) and the low or nonexistent performance fees paid for appearing in the various competitions. The corps felt that not only were they having their creative potential as artistic performing groups stifled, but they were being financially starved. (A similar group of Eastern corps, the United Organization of Junior Corps [also known as the "Alliance"], was formed by the 27th Lancers, Garfield Cadets, Boston Crusaders, Blessed Sacrament Golden Knights, and Blue Rock.) The Combine members felt that the corps should be making their own rules, operating their own competitions and championships, and keeping the bulk of the monies that those shows earned. For the 
caption: Buses belonging to the Santa Clara Vanguard
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