The JROTC teams at Nixa High School have been working for their upcoming competitions and tournaments. The archery team had its first tournament on Nov. 20. 

   Sergent Robert Hodapp, the head commander in the JROTC program, said the drill team is more competitive just because of how much longer it’s been around than the archery team.

   Hodapp said that the students get ready for their competitions mainly by their morning practices and afternoon practices. Also based on which team someone is trying to get on has its own way of recreating people. The competitions have been said to be difficult because of the amount of skill and dedication it takes to get onto the team and do well in the competitions. Hodapp has said that when a competition goes south he tends to watch the videos of the performance and figure out what happened and why it happened.

   “We tend to sit down with the leader of the team and try to figure out what happened, normally a video is being recorded while all of this is happening so we will watch the video to see what the team can do better in,” Hodapp said. 

   Senior Aiden Ewald is a captain of a drill team and of the color guard team. Ewald said that the Drill team is quite a competitive team but if you work hard enough on the moves and take the time and energy, then it shouldn’t be too difficult to get onto the team. The team is like a community that is working together to get better and to march around accordingly. Drill team is when you’re marching around in a formal way while looking nice.

   “Moving around from point A to point B,” Ewald said.

   At the end of competitions everyone is given their own gray cards that docks what they did well and what they can improve on next time. It’s also not the biggest thing if you mess up during a portion because the competition is set up into sections so if you mess up on one thing it will only affect that one portion of the performance and not the whole thing. Ewald has said that he is confident in this year’s team because of how well they have been doing so far. 

   Senior Allen McNeal is one of the top shooters in the new archery team this year. With the archery team being new to the Nixa High school program it’s been a fun new experience for McNeal. There are three different rankings within the teams and that’s marksmens, sharp shooter, and expert marksman, McNeal is one of the five students in the program this year that is an expert marksman. While archery can be a competitive sport because it’s all skill biased and no one has any more room for error then the others it’s mainly just friendly competition. 

   “It’s friendly competition, of course there’s no animosity between people about it,” McNeal said.