Military Drill Judging

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For decades the only requirement to be qualified to judge a military drill competition was graduation from a service’s Basic Training. That’s it. You’re now able to rank and rate and assign a score to what you see on the competitive field. And what’s better is if you are a Drill/Training Instructor or on an honor guard. Somehow, you are …

Armed Driller Alternatives

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‘Part One’ of this post is here: Psst, Hey Buddy. Armed Exhibition Drill Rifles for Sale The above blog post is great if you want to buy a demilitarized rifle or even a working 1903, M14 or M1 Garand, but what else is out there and are these alternatives right for military drill? Well, let’s look and see: Let’s start …

How to Switch Sides During a Column Movement

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This will be for XD (Exhibition Drill) and is fairly easy. We need to number each of the elements/squads as usual: the far left squad is number 1 and the far right squad is number 3 (or 4). The movement is called as two consecutive right steps are taken. On the first left, the first squad leader executes a right …

Hard Work, Discipline, Desire and…

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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 …

Why do we Practice the way we do?

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Sometimes students have a hard time understanding why it is we spend so much time working on individual skills, when it’s easy to see that most of the team can do the skills. I tell them it’s a lot like a sports team. Every experienced baseball player has skills – they already know how to run, how to hit, and …

How to Become a Certified Visual Judge

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The World Drill Association and DrillMaster now offer a training and certification program for judges for the military drill world. All aspects of military drill come under the visual category and should be judged as such. That is where the program comes in. There are four visual captions: 1. Overall Effect 2. Composition Analysis 3. Movement 4. Equipment Also a …

Tulane 2012 Solo Commentaries

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The Mardis Gras Drill Meet at Tulane University 2012 was a great success! I was there judging solos. There were 12 competitors and all did a great job. The cadets from West Point, University of South Carolina NROTC and Norwich all pulled away from the others with great routines. I forgot my digital voice recorder, but used my Android phone’s …

Licensing Music for Performances

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No matter what kind of performance you do, if it is to music and someone else wrote it, you need a license if you want to record and/or broadcast the performance. So, what is a Driller to do? This is where Copycat Licensing comes in. They will take care of everything for you, but you need to give them time! …

Pssst. Hey Buddy, wanna buy an M1903?

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Armed Exhibition Drill Rifles for Sale How to buy a demilitarized Rifle It’s relatively easy to purchase a demilitarized (demil’d) rifle from the the companies below. If you already have a Federal Firearms License (FFL), then you can order the rifle straight from the company. If you do not have an FFL, you can go to your local gun dealer …