During the early 1980s, the judges were looking for "cutting edge" performances, but The Cavaliers were not performing at that level. However, the Cavaliers' winter guard was, under the leadership of Steve Brubaker, winning the Winter Guard International championship in 1981–83. In 1982, Brubaker, who had also been working with the Cavalier Cadets corps since '78, was named head drill designer for The Cavaliers. That change brought about a change in the corps' attitude and this, along with the music selections becoming more and more classically oriented, helped The Cavaliers rise to the top half of DCI Finalists, though not without tests. 1982's Pines of Rome started the season with near-disastrous results, and the corps felt that it was luck as much as talent that earned the corps an eleventh-place finish at DCI in Montreal. But 1982 saw the Cavaliers forge a solid association with the Village of Rosemont and its mayor, Donald E. Stephens, a relationship that would relieve the corps of many financial worries. The corps improved to ninth in 1983 and eighth in '84, and the crowds were witnessing something new and different in Brubaker's drill schemes. The 1985 program of "Also Spracht Zarathustra" and selections from "The Planets" impressed fans and judges alike, elevating the Cavaliers to a fifth-place finish in Madison, Wisconsin; the corps' first finish in the top half of DCI's Top Twelve. In 1986 came "Variations on a Korean Folk Song" and the dragon drill that placed Brubaker solidly with George Zingali as the two greatest drill designers of the day. it also moved the Cavaliers into a third-place finish at DCI Finals.