After losing so many age-outs in 1987, the '88 corps was very young. Playing Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, the corps finished in fifth place in Kansas City. 1989's John Rutter program carried the corps back to third place, and the "Cavalier Anthems" took them to their first runner-up finish (behind the Cadets of Bergen County) in Buffalo in 1990, but The Cavaliers would finish the 1980s without returning to the top of the drum corps world. There was not even a "nationals" championship, as there had been in the Seventies, since the American Legion, the VFW, and the CYO were no longer hosting national championships. But 1990 also saw the Cavaliers start the transition to three valve horns, and it was the year of The Cavaliers' very first DCI Regional championship, when they upset the previously undefeated Blue Devils and Phantom Regiment to win DCI Midwest at Whitewater.