Overview
If you want to compete successfully towards an “overall championship” at most competitions nationwide, you need some kind of an exhibition drill routine, armed or unarmed.
However, maybe it’s early in the year. Maybe you haven’t quite gotten there yet. Maybe you graduated every cadet that knew what they were doing when it came to exhibition.
The list goes on but the conundrum remains: What do we do when we don’t have an exhibition?
Or, more aptly for some: What do we do when we only have a SMALL amount of exhibition?
You Have Options
That’s right! You have some choices to make. But upfront, we’ll clarify the one option we RARELY (if ever) recommend:
- You “Scratch” the Exhibition Opting Not to Compete
What?!
Yeah. You read that right. We recommend you compete in the exhibition category even if you don’t have an exhibition routine. And if you have PART of a routine, we definitely don’t recommend you sit it out until you’re “ready.”
But…why?
Experience on the floor is experience on the floor. It’s one more chance to learn how you physiologically react to pressure and stage fright. It’s one more chance to practice great bearing under duress. In short, by scratching the event, we’re intentionally taking away an additional performance opportunity!
So what do we do?
Here are some great options you can explore:
- Run the Regulation Card Again – Yes, it’s goofy, but it’s a widely employed strategy in Texas especially! Did you know that there’s no rule against simply marching the regulation card again? Will you max out the creativity points? Absolutely not. Will people get confused about three minutes in? Probably. Will your judges be confused? There’s a good chance. But ultimately, they have to give you a score. And if you do it well, that score probably won’t be LOW in the categories that overlap. Plus, you’ll have the benefit of getting another competition rep in with regulation!
- March Just a Simple Floor Plan – Using our “Floor Plan First” approach, create a simple routine that just moves through several formations and covers the whole floor. Use regulation-based commands and don’t worry too much about filling that routine in with base sequences. Will it make time? Maybe not – that’s OK, take the penalty. Will it be as cool as your competition? Probably not – that’s OK, too! Doing something simple and easy is preferable to sitting on the sidelines!
- March Parts of Your Routine Multiple Times – If you only have two minutes of a routine and the competition calls for six, did you know you could just run the same chunk three times and make minimum time? Do what you have, have the cadet commander march the team to a new part of the floor, and do it all again. We’ve even seen times where judges didn’t realize what was happening!
Conclusion
Opportunities to perform in competition can be rare. The temptation to “sit it out” until the team is “ready” is a big one but remember: if you’re not yet well into the process of exhibition drill, you’re probably not TRYING to win the event.
When we ditch the idea that we need to score WELL and transition to the idea that we just need to get out there, doors open and we start to see exhibition as another chance to perform for judges, even if what we’re performing isn’t considered “ideal” even by our standards!
BUT if you want help having an exhibition routine, check out our services – we can help take the tough part of this process and make it a bit easier!