No More “First Tour / Second Tour”
When the Jersey Surf departs its home base and the friendly confines of the Camden County Technical School’s Sicklerville, NJ campus next June, the corps will commemorate another organizational milestone as it will embark for the first time on the entire Drum Corps International summer tour.

“When the Surf started in 1990, our goal was to provide a weekend-only alternative to a full summer tour to those we were attracting to our organization,” explained Jersey Surf Executive Director Bob Jacobs. “For the first 18 years of our existence, the Surf participated in the drum corps activity as an Open Class (formerly Division II) corps, and our touring opportunities were limited. At that time we pretty much restricted our events to weekends throughout June and July, and took part in a two week long tour to the World Championships every August.”

Several seasons ago, the organization changed its focus based on the input of its membership.

“Based on the strong desire of our members to broaden the scope of our touring radius each summer, the corps moved to DCI’s elite World Class a few years ago, and eventually added miles to the tour to include the DCI Southwestern Regional Championship in San Antonio, TX. We were very aware that the young men and women who were joining the corps were doing so because they wanted to tour greater distances in the summertime, and the desire to increase the number of days and miles eventually replaced the desire to participate on a part-time level as a part of our operational focus. Our desire to maintain the weekend touring model was no longer in alignment with the reasons students were seeking to participate in World Class drum corps, so we listened to what the members were telling us and began planning to expand the profile of our tour accordingly.”

Highlighting the coming summer tour will be the Surf’s first trip ever to the Minneapolis regional, and a robust amount of travel through the nation’s heartland.

“It will be unusual for us to not have many performances on the east coast until the end of the summer,” says Jacobs, “but the change of scenery will be a great thing for the organization and will make our return even more special for our members and alumni when the tour brings us back to our regular stomping grounds late in the season when we’re at our very best. We’re looking forward to making thousands of new friends in parts of the country we’ve yet to visit. We’ve been extremely conservative with our finances since the corps’ founding, and now after 24 years, we’re taking what we feel is the next logical step in our ongoing evolution.”

The Drum Corps International schedule will be released on DCI.org in the coming weeks. We’ll be sure to post the Surf’s schedule here and on our Facebook page once it has been confirmed.