UNARMED EXHIBITION

Haven Reed (12) could not contain her excitement when it was announced she had been chosen to be Unarmed Exhibition captain last year. Having been participating since her sophomore year, Reed has developed a passion for the event.

“I absolutely love [Unarmed Exhibition],” Reed said. “It’s basically a form of marching and dancing all at the same time. I feel like it’s really underrated and people should watch it more because it’s very enjoyable.”

Since this is an exhibition event, Reed and her team have full liberty to create their own routine, which is one of her favorite parts.

“It’s very fun,” she said. “We make beats using our hands and stomps in a military fashion. We get a lot of creative freedom, which is really exciting.”

The team, consisting of 13 people, have met twice a week since the beginning of the school year. The practices usually go overtime, however. Because of this, Reed said that the Westview Unarmed Exhibition has been doing consistently well in the past, and she has high hopes this year.

“Our team has stayed pretty stable,” Reed said. “I really want us to do well because last year we were really close to placing for a trophy, but we didn’t end up getting it. I think this year, seeing how our members have been doing pretty well, we could totally get [one].”
Even though they have some new students this year, Reed is not worried.

“We do have a lot of younger members on the team, but they’re working super hard to learn all the beats,” she said. “They’re really fast learners and I’m so proud of them.”

Overall, regardless of how they do, Reed loves being a leader.

“I just have such a passion for [Unarmed Exhibition],” Reed said. “The part I love best is seeing the team grow and excel.”

COLOR GUARD

Ethan Sanchez (11), the current captain of the ROTC Color Guard team, owes his capabilities to a particularly passionate upperclassman who mentored him in his freshman year. The team only consists of four individuals.

“It is a regulation drill where there are two rifle bearers and two flag bearers,” Sanchez said.

“Leading the Color Guard is [one of the] flag bearers, carrying the American flag. It takes a lot of practice to get the routine perfect. ”

As Color Guard commander, Sanchez has to take on extra responsibilities.

“The routine consists of one drill card that has 36 commands on it and it must be memorized by the Color Guard commander,” he said. “[I am] in charge of making sure the team stays inside of the 75×75 drill pad, all while calling cadence and making sure the commands are called at the correct time.”

Sanchez said, however, the most difficult part is how the event is scored.

“Color Guard is scored by marine drill instructors who are experts at all things related to drill,” Sanchez said. “They look for any little thing they could take points for; this includes the angle of the rifles, angle of the flags, alignment of heels, bearing, command presence, and even the uniforms.”

Having even one upperclassman leave, Sanchez said, as they did this year, can be very stressful due to the complexity of the event.

“We are a very tight-knit group,” Sanchez said. “It takes a really long time to understand how to work together as a team and just how to do the event [overall]. So, having a new member, it took a while to really dial back into where we used to be last year.”

For the upcoming field meet, Sanchez hopes to gain experience for his team.

“Even though we’ve prepared a lot, it’s still been very rushed coming into the new school year,” Sanchez said. “So, this field meet is definitely still just an introduction for the team.”

ARMED BASIC

Pierce McMurry (11) joined the Armed Basic team as a freshman. Back then, he was a couple of inches shorter, had eyes wide with excitement, and grasped his rifle tightly in his hand as he looked up towards the upperclassmen for direction and tried to follow their moves. Three years later, he is now leading the team.

“It was the first event I’d ever done [for the ROTC field meet competitions] as a freshman,” McMurry said. “I just instantly [clicked] with it. Coming out of [last year’s] field meet, where we had a bit of a disappointing performance, I wanted to step up [this year] and take charge.”

Armed Basic, as McMuury explained, is a 14-person team that marches in regulation drill with rifles.

Having a set routine, which describes the ‘basic’ part of the title,to put forth their best performance and be as synchronized as possible takes an immense amount of practice. McMurry said they have been preparing since the beginning of the school year.

“We’ve been meeting twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays for an hour,” he said. “We spend the season trying to perfect our moves.”

McMurry added that another challenge for the team was the substantial number of seniors who graduated last year. He said it was an obstacle to build up underclassmen to a competitive level in just a couple of months.

“We were struggling from a small sophomore class coming out of last year,” McMurry said. “But, the good news is our freshmen and our [current] seniors really stepped up, and we filled those spots relatively quickly.”

For their first upcoming field meet, McMurry said he has high hopes, but since their team is relatively new, he is not too concerned with the placing.

“You can only educate someone so much by mouth,” McMurry said. “But we’ve had a pretty good run so far. I’d be ecstatic if we got top five.”