Sunrisers Drum and Bugle Corps
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The Sunrisers Drum and Bugle Corps is an All-Age Corps, or Senior Corps, that performs in the Drum Corps Associates. The Sunrisers started as the Marine Memorial Drum Corps of Nassau County in 1950 by a man named John Hodge. It was originally a junior corps until 1953 when the young musicians. This is when Hodge announced the corps as a Senior Corps and where it stood.
The name got changed when Hodge was listening to the radio and the song "The World is waiting for the Sunrise" by Les Paul and Mary Ford. Immediately, Hodge calls Ry Nicholas, a bugle instuctor, and told him of his idea to change the name of the corps to the "Sunrisers"
From 54-57, the Sunrisers became one of the best corps in the Long Island area, seeing them in parades and exhibition around the area and performing in all the standstill competitions.
They went on to many other competitions and joined up with DCA in 1966 and came in 2nd only to the Hawthorne Caballeros Drum and Bugle Corps by 1.10 points. They continued to very well and won the American Legion National Championship and contnued to be a contender in DCA.
The Sunrisers contnued to get better in the DCA circuit, which would pay off soon. In 1977, they were going neck-to-neck with the Caballeros all season, neither of the them lost at a competition that year, until DCA pre-lims. At the pre-lims, the Sunrisers put on one of the best performances all season, beating out the Cabs by three points. Next day, held at J. Birney Crum Stadium in Allentown, PA. It came down to the final two corps, the Caballeros and the Sunrisers. The Sunrisers came in first place over the Cabs by five-hundreths of a point, a very close win, but well worth it.
The next year started slow but finished off beating the Cabs by .05 at pre-lims and three points for finals. This was the year that the Sunrisers became the first corps to get a perfect score in the Brass GE(general effect) category.
The corps couldn't get the three-peat in 1979 and didn't win another championship until 1982 where they went back-to-back in 1983 winning their third and fourth championships.
In 1985, they moved to New Jersey after being in Long Island for so long. In 1987, or the "rain-out" year because of finals being cancelled due to rain. The Sunrisers won at pre-lims, which was then treated as the finals, by two points, though the field was covered in mud because of the rain, which gave the corps it's fifth championship. They, yet again, went back-to-back, though under a new director. The next year, they went out and tied the Bushwackers. But they lost because of a new tie breaker system enforced, which allowed Bush to win by a tenth of a point.
After that year, Sun started to fall, 1991 they missed finals for once in eleventh place. The Corps went inactive in 93, but stayed as a mini-corps. In 1994 they went back into competition but went back to inactive state in 2001. Two years later, they returned to the scene, and have been impoving ever since.
