My critiques for each of the female performances (squad and platoon, RD and XD) at the first annual Astronaut High School Drill Meet. Click the titles for each school and the audio file should begin to download for you. Congratulations to all of the schools that participated! And a big thank you to all of the judges: local Army recruiters, …
How to Switch from Regualtion Drill to Exhibition Drill
A short time ago a student friend of mine sent me a video of his armed solo performance asking for feedback (I give real-time audio feedback on performances of Drillers and teams in the WDA Adjudication System: Overall Effect, Composition Analysis, Marching & Equipment- usually a combined critique of a little from each caption). To preface the video, he told …
Ask The DrillMaster: Commander Procedures for Columns?
Let’s begin with defining where a team commander has control. This is called the “Span of Control.” As yo can see from the diagram below, a commander’s “span of control” is 180-degrees all around the formation at 3 steps from the formation. However, in competition team commanders are to maintain a position to the left side of the formation. Having …
Regulation Drill: What I would like to see
Ultimately, I’d love to see Open Regulation Drill and Open Color Guard, both from the World Drill Association, incorporated in any drill meet that would want to take on this awesome and exciting replacement to the standard RD and CG phases. For now, though I’d like to see more moves that are listed in the drill and ceremonies manuals actually …
The Essence of Judging Military Drill
DrillMaster explains how to judge military drill.
The Column Movement For Each Service
Here is the column movement: The picture below shows the steps as I count them: without pivots. See your service manual for specifics, but you get the idea from this which is much easier to digest: pivots are pivots and steps are steps. Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The guidon may have to take more …
What is a Military Drill Team?
A military drill team is an armed or unarmed marching unit that performs routines based on military drill. All drill teams, no matter what size, perform or exhibit their routine.
15-Count Manual Arms and Moving One’s Head
A question I received: how can you not move your head when your doing the 15-Count Manual of Arms? Answer: The 15-Count Manual of Arms (the command is: “15-Count, Manual, ARMS“) accomplished either stationary or while marching is, from Order Arms: Right Shoulder (1, 2, 3, 4) Left Shoulder (5, 6, 7, 8) Present Arms (9, 10, 11) Order Arms (12, …
The Drill Meet
What is a Drill Meet? In America, the drill meet, after putting in hours of hard work designing, choreographing, practicing, rewriting and practicing some more, is a competition for drill teams, Drillers and color teams (NOTE: military-based: “color team;” music-based: “color guard“). The organizations that compete are each services’ Jr., high school, and Sr., college, Reserve Officer Training Corps, Army …
Hard Work, Discipline, Desire and…
I was introduced to a speech by Eric Thomas, “The Hip-Hop Preacher” (more motivational speaker than preacher) yesterday. I appreciate where he has come from, the struggles he has overcome and most of the message that he preaches. Much of what he says is inspiring and one of my friends made a great motivational video and placed it on his …