ROTC unit competes in meet
Posted March 3, 2013 at 5:35 pm in Featured, News
USC’s Air Force ROTC Detachment 060 hosted their 48th annual Southern California Invitational Drill Meet on Saturday in Redondo Beach.
Discipline · Miguel Navarro (left to right), Garrett Bauer, Daniel Seo and Elliot Turcotte march on Saturday at the Southern California Invitational Drill Meet where more than 30 teams are awarded for performing drills. — Ralf Cheung | Daily Trojan
First started in 1965, the largest drill meet west of the Mississippi drew drill teams from all military branches across the country.
Detachment 060 consists of 63 students from 26 different universities and community colleges. Each year, more than 1,000 junior and senior ROTC cadets from more than 30 teams across the nation attend the event.
Cadet John Dike of the Air Force ROTC, a senior majoring in industrial systems engineering and a commander of the drill meet, was excited to participate in the event.
“Our detachment has hosted since 1965,” Dike said. “I’m sure the level of intensity for our competition is unparalleled. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
The meet’s judges provide a unique and quite entertaining feature to the event each year. Teams are judged by notorious Marine Corps drill instructors from the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. Enthusiastic and unabashed to get in a cadet’s face, these animated judges have been a big part of the tradition.
Dike said the judges are tough, but embody the perfection all drill teams strive for.
“It really throws people off, but our goal is to make it easy for everyone to act under pressure,” Dike said. “If you’re pressured by being told to do something quickly and by someone raising their voice, that’s just one more thing for us to help you overcome.”
Dike believes the lessons learned at the competition translate well to actual military experience.
“What we do here in our training and across the military is all carried over into this drill competition,” Dike said. “It’s all about just being used to these things, not being desensitized in understanding the intensity of the situation and not taking it personally.”
Past winners of this drill meet include Brigham Young University, UCLA and Oregon State University.
“It’s a great program that we run, and every year we try to make it better,” Dike said. “We definitely build legacy every single year among each competitor that comes to our event.”
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This article is tagged: air force rotc, detachment 060, drill team, marine corps, southern california invitational drill meet
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