• Music Judge- Randy Dale, Associate Director of Bands, University of Mississippi (Oxford, MS)

• Music Judge- Steve Warner, Director of Bands (retired), Jonesboro High School (Jonesboro, AR)

• Music Judge- Jason Deem, Director of Bands, Union City High School (Union City, TN)

• Visual Judge- Tim Pierce, CEO of Signature Designs (Memphis, TN)

• Visual Judge- Jack Pursifull, Visual & Drill Designer (Indianapolis, IN)

• Percussion- Moose Davis, Percussion Designer (Broken Arrow, OK)

• Colorguard- Ken Martinson, Founder of Marching.com (Nashville, TN)

• Drum Majors- Nathan Cunningham, Assistant Band Director, Conway Public Schools (Conway, AR)

Adjudicators for The Paragould – McDonald’s Marching Invitational are selected by the contest staff. Each adjudicator must possess the highest level of competence and fairness and have a solid reputation among fellow music educators. We understand the importance of assembling judges that are non-biased. The Paragould-McDonald's contest staff strives each year to bring in adjudicators from out of area.

The competition is run on a caption-judged format. There are three (3) Music Ensemble/Effect judges and two (2) Visual Ensemble/Effect judges. In addition, there are three additional caption judges to determine rank in those captions, but their score does not effect the overall score. Those are: (1) Drum Major judge, one (1) Colorguard/Auxillary judge, and one (1) Percussion judge.

• Music Ensemble/Effect (20% each judge) - 60%

• Visual Ensemble/Effect (20% each judge) - 40%

• Percussion - 0%

• Colorguard - 0%

• Drum Major - 0%

In the unlikely event of a tie score between bands, the tiebreaker will be determined by the band with the higher score in the Visual Ensemble/Effect category.

A numerical score will determine the rating and ranking, as well as the colorguard, percussion and drum major captions. Ratings are assigned as follows:

• I (Superior) 80.0 - 100.0

• II (Excellent) 60.0 - 79.9

• III (Average) 40.0 - 59.9

• IV (Below Avg.) 0.0 - 39.9