Nighthawks
The Nighthawks are our very own armed Drill Team and are in the middle of their competition season, with four competitions so far this season and a well established track record the boys are very much on their way to Nationals. The long days of practice and many hours of being together has helped to cultivate a bond unlike any other.
Senior, Commander of the Nighthawks, Jaden Dapilmoto, comments on the team dynamic. “We’re basically like brothers, we’re close and pretty much share everything with each other,” Dapilmoto said.
Senior, Deputy Commander, Nicholas Barrera agrees with Dapilmoto’s assement of the team dynamic. “At practice we try to keep a serious atmosphere, but on the weekends we go bike riding, hiking, and just hanging out. Doing stuff to bond with each other,” Barrera said.
At the end of the day, win or lose, the boys have each others backs and thats all that truly matters to them.
Foxhounds
The Foxhounds are a team that not many people know much about, but are ones who shouldn’t be ignored. With their knowledge and skills over computer programs such as windows, lynux, and cisco, this small team is a force you won’t see coming.
Senior, Commander of the Foxhounds, Noah Salazar, explains what preparations for competitions and their placement is like. “We have checklists we go through, we’ll check them over, make sure they’re correct then we’ll do our procedures for what we do on each competition [in competitions] we’ve done pretty well, in the past we’ve come to the highest tier you can make. We made it to state, which was the competition before nationals and this year we’ve done 180 out of 200 points,” Salazar said.
Blue aces
The Blue Aces are also a Drill Team however they are Unarmed and also in the middle of their competition season, with four competitions so far this season and have a history of being either 1st or 2nd at Nationals. The long days of practice and many hours of being together have shown to pay off with their impressive win streak.
Senior, Commander of the Blue Aces, Monique Bienen, comments on the success so far this year and her hopes for the coming Nationals competition. “I feel great [about going into the competition]! The girls are very dedicated, hard workers and they amaze me everyday with the progress they make. I’m so excited to see them at Nationals,” Bienen said.
The Nationals competition is still a few months away, but Bienen is confident they’ll be ready to perform as well as years past.
Praetorians
The Praetorians are a physical training team and what that means is that they excersize competitively. They get scored on running, sit-ups, push-ups, and pull-ups.
Senior, Commander of the Praetorians, Karter Bonillas, comments on the preparation for competitions. “A week in advance we read over what we will be competing in during the competition and we’ll hold some assesments to see where the teams are at, and put them together based on that,” Bonillas said.
Later Bonillas explains the set up of a competitions from start to finish, all procedures and such.
“We get there, stretch out real quick and go through the stations of most of the time it’s usually push-ups, sit-ups, the run and pull-ups if we have to do that toward the end,” Bonillas said.
Over all the team has done well in this season always taking home a placing of 1st through 3rd.
Thunderbirds
The Thunderbirds is a co-ed unarmed drill team, the first of its kind at Brandeis. With being their first year this team has exceeded expectations in their respective categories (inspection and regulation).
Junior, Commander of the Thunderbirds, Juli Del Giudice, talks about what it’s like to be involved with a team that doesn’t have the designated gender divide that the drill teams have seen in the past. “We all have a really good team bonding, but at the same time we all have to go back to our varsity teams at the end of the days [boys to Nighthawks and girls to Blue Aces] but overall there’s no seperation between girls and guys because we all work together,” Del Giudice said.
Titans
The Titans Rocketry Team is one of the smaller teams out of these six, but that’s not to say that they aren’t successful during their competition season. In the five competitions they’ve competed in this year they’ve done well, and in the latest competition took home first overall.
Senior, Commander of Titans, Jaymes Fry, talks about that feeling of competing and winning. “[The best part of competing] is the satisfaction of winning,” Fry said.