Bob Jones AFROTC among top squads at Tennessee meet

Precise performance and unwavering focus led cadets from Bob Jones High School to excel at drill competition in Jackson, Tenn.

Bob Jones Air Force ROTC (AFROTC) earned second place overall against 10 teams from southern region schools at the annual Northside High School Drill Competition. Chief Master Sgt. Ellis Clark and Lt. Col. Randy Herd are AFROTC instructors at Bob Jones.

Bob Jones also earned first place for both armed regulation drill and color guard regulation and third place in both inspection regulation and unarmed regulation drill.

Participants in all areas of the drill competition were Christian Weiss, Sean Motz, Tyler Renn, Christopher Marris, Chantel Watson, Teralynn Stewart, James Agee, Edward Little, John Dyson, Akeia Williams and Christian Morris.

“Our Honor Guard won first place for excellent execution of their maneuvers. The team consisted of cadets Chantel Watson, Sean Motz, Christian Weiss and Akeia Williams, who were judged against nine other teams,” Clark said.

The Honor Guard performed a sequence of 31 memorized steps, including presentation of colors and a myriad of directional changes using wheel turns and color reverse maneuvers while staying in step, keeping perfect alignment and maintaining a timing of 100-120 steps per minute, Clark said.

During regulation drill, whether armed or unarmed, the drill team commander directs the squad through 36 or more procedural movements that must be executed crisply and exactly, as dictated by Air Force regulations manuals.

In armed drills, “the additional challenge of handling and moving a 10-pound rifle while marching isn’t as easy as the cadets make it look, especially when everyone trying to remain in sync to execute the exact same move,” Clark said.

This semester, AFROTC will attend the J.O. Johnson High School Drill Meet in March and Lafayette Drill Meet in Oxford, Miss. in April. “Our cadets enjoy stepping to the challenge,” he said.

“Drill team students are always first class,” Bob Jones Principal Robby Parker said. “They present the colors at PTA, sporting events and at different functions around town.”