US Military Service Drill and Ceremonies Manuals These are the manuals you need to know front-to-back, back-to-front, inside and out. While some may think this information boring, as someone affiliated with a marching program (cadet, military member, first responder, etc.), these manuals are the foundation of what you do and it is a MUST that you read your service’s …
Nothing Beats the Feeling of a Job Well Done
Nothing Beats the Feeling of a Job Well Done
What do judges look for in a military drill team performance?
What do judges look for in a military drill team performance? I get this question quite often. Here is the answer: it doesn’t matter “what the judge is looking for,” it matters what the standard is. I put that in quotes, because obviously, a judge is going to be looking for something, but what that something is has nothing to …
JROTC Class Regulation Drill Sequences
JROTC Class Regulation Drill Sequences Each JROTC has an annual inspection and for that inspection the inspector watches each class (platoon or flight) go through a sequence of commands. Some JROTC units use a standardized sequence from a drill competition and some use a sequence created for first-year JROTC cadets. I decided to create score sheets for the latter based …
Astronaut High School Drill Meet 2013 Performance Critiques
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 …