Nease Earns Sweeping Victories in JROTC Competitions

The Nease Drill Team has always been one of the more prestigious programs at our school; this year they have once again showed why this is the case. On March 5th, they won the Area-12 Drill Championship in Douglas, GA. They then went on to place 3rd at the Navy National Academic, Athletic and Drill Championships at NAS Pensacola on April 1-2. Ordinarily drill meets are spaces a month apart to give the teams time to prepare, but the presence of COVID-19 changed the schedule, resulting in the JROTC Varsity Drill Team completing three drill meets within 22 days; they got top honors in all of them.

I approached some members of the ROTC program to learn more of the nature of drill and the significance of these victories. One ROTC Senior, Thomas Olinger, explained drill as an intensive form of marching emulating that of the military. Thomas believed that the performance of the team was “really good”, and that they “brought home the victory in style”.

Another Senior in ROTC, Tianyu Jiao, was excited the team could accomplish so much in a difficult year. “The unit won 3rd place in national academic athletic drill championships”, Tianyu believes the scale of the victories and the time frame were especially noteworthy. “The JROTC program won 3 meets in Georgia in 4 weeks. Although I myself did not participate I was excited by this accomplishment made by the unit.”

Source: https://sites.google.com/a/navyjrotc.us/nease-panther-njrotc/