Overview
For the brand new JROTC instructor, we know there are many responsibilities. You’re expected to be a teacher, a coach, a supply technician, the face of the United States Armed Forces to your community, a model of military leadership to your students. That’s before you add in a hall monitor, a test proctor, a bus driver, a robotics expert, an archery coach, a range officer, an academics guru, a drone flying or model rocket shooting person. The list goes on and on.
Every co-curricular offered through Junior ROTC provides amazing benefits when a dedicated JROTC teacher meets a motivated group of students. And while things like drones, robotics, and Cyber Patriot require hyper-specific knowledge, the expectation that instructors supplement their knowledge with subject matter experts is well-established.
But everyone did drill. Right?
If you’re looking at starting a drill team, it’s important to start with the basics of what a drill team really IS before assembling your students, putting them in a formation, and getting to work on that drill sequence that was emailed out to every unit in the area for an upcoming competition.
(P.S. This article also contains links to various areas of Drillpedia where you can find even more information on each topic!)
Who
A drill team is comprised of the following core elements:
- The JROTC teacher actively serving as a coach and/or advisor
- A group of students
Well. That’s. Broad?
Yes. But notice what we listed first. A JROTC drill team is NOT just a group of cadets leading themselves. It’s comprised of both the JROTC instructor AND the cadets. And we wanted to be more specific: the JROTC instructor is actively (presently, involved) serving (not substituting themselves for the cadet leadership) as a coach (teaching skills and coaching performance) and/or (they don’t need to be both) advisor (someone proactively guiding the drill team program.)
What
Generally described, there are two roles a drill team might serve:
- A performing unit primarily tasked with representing the unit at various performance opportunities
- A competitive unit primarily oriented to provide a competitive experience for its members through attending drill competitions (“meets”)
The former is an easy task: you need cadets to comprise a color guard team, perhaps an honor guard, and definitely an exhibition drill team. This is a great way for units who want to reap the benefits of having a performing face of their program without the same time and labor intensive effort to interface with the activity. This article isn’t primarily focused on this but we recommend you reach out to the instructors in our Facebook group about how they have established performing units at their programs. At least one of our “Group Experts” has done so very successfully!
The latter, however, is where most JROTC units tend to gravitate. And this is where we’ll spend our time. A competitive drill team, as the name suggests, attends competitions, often called “drill meets” in an attempt to display maximum excellence.
Teams generally compete in the following events:
- Regulation Drill: A test of the ability of a team to perform a specifically-provided sequence of drill commands, with or without arms, to a high degree of excellence in accordance with the unit’s stated drill manual
- Color Guard: A test of the ability of a 4-person color guard team to perform a specifically-provided sequence of color guard commands to a high degree of excellence in accordance with the unit’s stated drill manual
Meets will also generally include the following, sometimes dependent on geographical or time factors:
- Exhibition Drill: A test of the ability of a team to choreograph and perform a unique display of military-inspired pageantry, with or without arms, to a high degree of excellence within a stated time limit
- Inspection: A test of the ability of a team to prepare their uniforms to a high degree of excellence in accordance with their service’s standards, prepare their hygiene and grooming to the highest level of military professionalism, and oftentimes display their general military knowledge and bearing through the answering of questions
Depending on your service or the area you’re in, drill may be a component of a larger “field meet” wherein other events such as Physical Fitness, Academics tests, sports, etc. are also components of the competition.
Teams should look carefully at the SOPs and LOIs of competitions they might reasonably attend and tailor their practices, team structure, etc. to best fit the needs of the competitions in which they hope to succeed!
When
The “drill season” varies widely from coast to coast, largely due to the differences in climate in various regions. Your geographic location will likely determine whether drill is primarily a fall/winter activity or a spring one. However, because drill is such a specific and time-intensive skill, just as your sports teams condition in the off-season (or allow their athletes to participate on other sports teams that will meaningfully improve their overall athleticism), many drill teams will spend their non-competitive season preparing to hit the ground running when competitions begin!
How you structure your drill season should be driven by backwards planning: find the desired end-state of your season and work in reverse to determine how much practice time, how many other competitions, etc. will positively contribute to how your students view the totality of their season.
There is no right or wrong answer. In traveling to teach programs all over, we have found programs achieving their goals by practicing non-stop but we’ve also found programs who treat drill as a spring sport wherein practices begin during the winter timeframe. As long as your goals match your means, you know best how to set your students up to succeed.
Where
You can find and attend competitions all over! You may have a district or regional-level infrastructure of competitions locally or you may have to travel a bit to find quality competitions if you’re more geographically isolated. There are national-level competitions attended by units around the country as well! Things like your budget, the anticipated time you have to give to practice, etc. will determine where your drill team competes throughout the season.
Why
Unlike traditional military drill and ceremonies which are primarily used to instill response to orders, discipline, esprit de corps, etc. drill team primarily represents an opportunity to teach your students about the value of performance. In doing so, you will likely achieve those traditional attributes but it’s important that we stop and mention this important facet:
Drill team competition, in our modern era, is so hyper-specific that the means to achieve excellence must necessarily deviate from traditional models of drill and ceremonies.
Because unlike Basic Training, you do not have a captive audience with unlimited time, endless repetition and nitpicking may not be the most effective tactic to achieve excellence. Ideally, drill team will teach students how to organize themselves individually and collectively. This will result in the efficient use of practice time.
Unlike Basic Training, because you are dealing with adolescents with the freedom to choose a different way to spend their time and not adults who have contractually obligated themselves to a particular career path, how you teach and address deficiencies will be vastly different. Ideally, drill team will teach students to be decisive both at practice and on the drill floor, making choices grounded in critical thinking, not just muscle memory.
Unlike Basic Training, the goal of a competitive drill team is to display a performance of military drill to be evaluated in a single “read” by mostly-untrained graders rather than to be a cohesive part of the breaking-down and building-up of a young Solider, Marine, Sailor, Airman, or Guardian. Ideally, drill team will teach students confidence through a performing arts activity perhaps more suited to them than theater, choir, or music.
Drill team can be an amazing vehicle to help your students succeed in life. It can also be a legitimately traumatizing experience that builds incredible fear of making mistakes (something we all know is the antithesis of success), a life-long struggle with physical fitness (because every mistake was met with some form of PT), a horrible relationship between the stress of preparing for a high-stakes function and mental health (because the primary characteristic of every competition was the stress), and poor interpersonal professional relationships (because, as we stated early on, not all elements of the team, i.e. the instructor, were present – or perhaps the instructor was TOO present.)
We say this to provide this guidance:
Competition drill team is not a basic training experience. The competitions do not measure the same outcomes. The training environment is not the same. It cannot be and the activity itself tells us, by how the rules and regulations of most drill meets are set up, that it is not merely marching young soldiers up and down the drill field.
We urge you to continually seek out guidance on best practices, ask questions, and improve your abilities as a teacher of drill to provide the best possible experience to your cadets!
How
We’ll keep this one short and sweet because there are plenty of resources here on this site!
- Clearly establish the “point” of having a drill team. What’s the goal?
- Identify the requirements of the competitions you hope to attend. Dates? Events? Rules?
- Identify and approach several cadet leaders in your program with the opportunity. Strive to find about 4 motivated, mature, individuals (who can likely also begin as a competition color guard team.)
- Get organized and create a team structure with those key leaders. This includes when practices could occur, how the team is organized, etc. Get the “inside of the house” ready for guests.
- Start recruiting actively.
- Start recruiting passively.
- When you have amassed the number of the right cadets to seed your program, hold a parent meeting to ensure each family is tracking with the requirements, important dates, ways to support, etc.
- Practice and compete!
Conclusion
Obviously, it’s not that simple in practice. And there will be road bumps along the way. But hopefully this article has prepared to you better to understand what goes into forming a competitive drill team and that the links throughout the article have given you a good starting point to learn more about the many incredible intricacies of creating a great experience for your cadets through this awesome performing art we call drill team!
And if you’re looking for help building your drill team program from the ground up, we offer services that will help you do just that!