Drill Team

Drill practice occurs at Hooker Fields nearby the Armory, where midshipmen practice to perfect their movements.
Drill sharpens military bearing and teaches self-discipline. Learning to execute drill maneuvers with perfect timing develops the unit’s’s cohesion and teaches the individual attention to detail. Leading drill gives midshipmen practice in giving clear and concise orders as well as practice planning and executing simple orders.
Mid-way into the fall semester the all volunteer force known as the Drill Team begins to practice for the annual Piedmont Region Consortium Drill Meet. Midshipmen begin training with just basic stationary movements such as “Right Face” and “Left Face” and then gradually work their way up to Marching and Rifle Manual with demilitarized M16-A2 service rifles. Midshipmen who choose to join the Drill Team can expect to practice once or twice a week, with practices usually constituting two hours a week. As a member of the Drill Team, a midshipman will learn not only the basics of armed and unarmed drill, but will also learn confidence and bearing while perfect difficult individual and group movements.
The Drill Competition is the culmination of all hard work done by all three school’s (UNC, Duke, and NC State) drill teams. The competition encourages each school to train their hardest and allows them to measure themselves against each other, which allows the midshipmen to accurately gauge their strengths and weaknesses to better focus their training to become well rounded individuals and skilled leaders of Sailors and Marines.