News
2/12/2010 MIDN 1/C Elizabeth Harrington, USF NROTC
TAMPA, Fla - In the dark breezy hours of the early morning, it was not unusual to find a group of Midshipmen walking back and forth across the tennis and basketball courts in PT gear. For weeks the all-volunteer drill team woke up before the wee hours of their mandatory physical fitness training to work on perfecting the drill movements they took to Tulane University in New Orleans. The Buccaneer Battalion drill team competed against dozens of other units from across the nation, including the long time champions of Norwich and Texas A&M. The drill team was composed of 13 motivated students ranging from freshmen to seniors. The squad basic team included MIDN 1/C Sieben and Harrington, MIDN 2/C Curatola, MIDN 3/C Dowling and Tomblin and MIDN 4/C Joiner, Randow, Novotny and Vale. The unit leader, MIDN 1/C Saraceni, brought the most experience to the team having already competed in many previous competitions. The color guard included MIDN 1/C Maravillas, MIDN 3/C Cody and Weaver, and MIDN 4/C Rush and Taylor. The color guard performed first in the late morning of February 12 and placed 15th out of 33 teams. The squad performed shortly after and found themselves placing 5th out of 27 teams. “I was astonished by how well we performed at the competition,” MIDN 2/C Curatola explained. “We did better during our five minutes at Tulane than the rest of our practices combined.” Placing 5th and 15th with a large number of underclassmen on the team stirred a lot of attention within the unit at USF because it raises the bar for next year. Although neither team was awarded trophies at the ceremony in New Orleans, the Drill Team advisor, AMOI GySgt Maynor, was extremely proud of the performance and is even more excited to take back over half of the team to next year‘s competition. “I felt good about the group of students we took to New Orleans because of the positive attitude everyone had during those early morning practices.” GySgt Maynor also added, “I knew once they got around the other schools at the competition, their level of intensity would rise and it reflected by us finishing in the top 5.” The future looks very bright for the young drill team. They are certainly going to be a group that demands excellence from themselves and has the attitude it takes to be winners at future competitions.
