Wow... what a weekend...

Ok, so, we left for Bitburg on Friday right as school started. The drive there wasn't bad it was about 4 hours (I think, I think I fell asleep). We get there and they weren't even done with the hotel rooms so we hit up the food court. I don't think a smaller food court exists. There was BK, Charleys and Anthonys. That's it. And seating for like...50 people. Well while we're there, K-Town's drill team shows up and of course everyone meets up with people from SLS and in the meantime the rest of us head over to the BX. Their BX, like their food court, was small. YET... it was still bigger than Darmstadt's. Weird...

Alright, so we get to the hotel (finally) and practice from 3 to like...7 in a wet parking lot outside the hotel. We practice everything, from Armed to Inspection and yeah. Boring practice, we got the cops called on us because some guys thought that our rifles were real.

Well that night something comes up. Something big. REALLY big. Manny's almost in tears, I'm at the point where I punch a hole in the wall in anger and God knows how many people are crying. Not good. I know you guys are wondering, what is it what is it?, but I can't say. We (Me, Brandon Williamson, and Manny) were all in my room trying to figure out what to do. We didn't know. Almost all our teams had a hole in them now. We thought (very briefly) about going home (err... That was Alan's contribution, we shot it down quickly), but that was a no-go because that's not fair to the team. Well, eventually at 3:30, we finally get to bed, we'd worked out the issue to what we could and it'd be interesting. At this point, we figured we'd be going home empty handed, no joke.

Well an hour and half later (and no sleep) we wake up. Hit up the breakfast buffet but nobody really eats because we're all nervous and scared. We're nervous about Comp and scared about what's going to happen, both at Comp and about the Drama Maker (Can't give out his name either). Well we get dressed and head up to Bitburg school and arrive JUST IN TIME to get to the Commander's meeting. Here's the rest:

Inspection

Inspection was the first team which was good because if it hadn't been our uniforms woulda looked dirty by the time we did get to it. Wasn't that bad, we didn't place (we never do, only Navy schools seem to) but it could've been better. I fail to understand how some people can do open ranks march perfectly until the one time it matters.

Color Guard

Color Guard was next. The team was Brandon (A.F. Flag), Manny (American Flag), Me (Guard) and Josh (Guard). Wasn't too bad either. During casing, Manny brought his flag up prematurely (as in, before we even started the casing) and caused the flag to untwirl but we couldn't do anything about it. I didn't know it was like that so when I went to case, I didn't see it and my case got stuck. So I had to stop and pull and jerk to get it on which really sucked. Manny felt so bad, but otherwise we did really good. As usual, we didn't place.

Regulation

Regulation did really, really good. So good that they placed 2nd overall which was really good.

Armed

Armed went next and I'm glad they did. Cause when Saber team saw how SUCKY they did, it made them want to do extra good. Nah.. It wasn't TOO bad, just a dropped rifle. It was hard because we had to throw in an alternate at the very last minute so..... They did how we expected.

Saber

Woot Woot Saber! My favorite team, went next. We had put Hickman in to fill a gap that very morning and he had all of about 2 hours of training. And did perfectly! I was so proud and impressed with my team I really was. During the routine, I faced the judges and they never wrote down a single thing wrong while I looked at them so I guess we did really well. Ramstein's saber team was in there watching so maybe that helped motivate them.

Unarmed

Unarmed blew us away. We thought of just cutting Unarmed off because Drama Maker left a spot with no alternate to fill it and we were worried two others might not go on at all because of what happened earlier. But nope, Manny jumped in as a commander and participant and from what I heard (and saw later) they blew it away. They had a whole gym full of people and schools screaming for them. Awesome, simply awesome.

Solo and Duo

Neither Fanti's solo nor Brandon and Manny's duo placed. Fanti's I'm not too surprised because it was kind of boring compared to others but Manny and Brandons was really really good. The judges said they grouped all duos together so they had to compete with people tossing sabers behind them and rifles so they played with an unfair advantage. They looked good though.

IDR

Sucked. Trick command got most of Wiesbaden out. He said left face and later said he meant right face which means everyone facing left was out. Crap.

Awards

Finally awards were given out and We got:

Saber - 1st place
Saber - Best Commander
Unarmed - 1st place
Unarmed - Best Commander
Regulation - 2nd place

We were so happy though, people were crying. We didn't expect to get anything, nothing at all. The team's movitvation and determination was next to nothing when we got on that bus that morning. But after Color Guard went we wanted to do good. It finally came back to them which was good. I was just so, so, so proud of my drill team this year. We practiced outside 97% of the time, in cold, snow, hail. sleet, rain, anything we had. We never quit practice because of rain, we never stopped early cause it snowed. We carried on and it paid off.

They never mentioned who got 2nd or 3rd place overall, just 1st place. That was weird but in all honesty, it was between us and Ramstein (as usual).

Let me know if you wanna know more though because I do have other stuff to do. If you want pics, email me or message me tpgluth@hotmail.com for them.

-Tom