National Cadet Competition

[BillB]

If NCC was turned into an every other year like SKI304 suggests you would eliminate about 50% of the ELIGIBLE cadets in one area. In two years a cadet would earn the Mitchell and be ineligible to be on a team for NCC at least for color guard competition which does not allow cadet officers.  Cadet officers can be on drill teams but not color guards. If you allowed cadet offcers on color guards for competition, they would replace cadet NCOs and you open another ball of wax.

[Eclipse]

One of the major problems is that most squadrons are not large enough to field a team in the first place, that fielding a competitive team is costly in time and money.....and lack of support from wing and region in terms of money and support.

That's the "more people" part of the very simple fix.

As to the cost, easily mitigated if we dropped everything back to the skills and forgot about the custom flags, tailored uniforms, and various
other non-core expenses that take what should be a fun event and turn it into a money drain for all involved.

How about a few years where the entire competition is done in PT gear or BDUs?  Concentrate on the drill movements, flag posting and the other important
and fun stuff.

And perhaps prohibit teams from hiring, yes hiring professional coaches, etc.

Yes....but isn't that putting the cart before the horse?
NCC should be there to make squadrons go beyond the minimums and enhance the CP.....but because of the time and effort to send a team.....we end up detracting from the program more times then not.

To make NCC a really useful too.....we all have to work harder to make it work....that's seems backwards to me.

You can't "go beyond" a minimum you never achieve.

We were discussing this specifically the other night, my suggestion was a wing-level, or even national mandate that every unit with cadets will have a color guard team,
and that every cadet would be required to participate at "x" level to make "x" achievement.

Being able to reasonably post colors and pay tribute to the flag, etc., is a skill every unit needs and one of those core assumptions you make about
CAP until you start visiting units.  Instead we have units all over the country that literally don't even own flags, some rarely if ever post colors for meetings,
and the term "formation" is foreign.

Lose the drill teams and take that money and put it back into the regional / wing HGA's, and get back to basics.

[a2capt]

If a Color Guard team member is allowed to participate at the National level as a Cadet Officer, as long as they started as an NCO at the lowest feeder competition in their stream, that brought them to that level of competition in the same season.

If it moved to every other year, then that would probably have to be allowed or the teams that make it there would have to hold back their cadets.

[Майор Хаткевич]

No one has to make Mitchell in 18 months...

[a2capt]

No, but not everyone starts Color Guard at a stripe or two, either.

[Майор Хаткевич]

CAP, like life is all about choices. I never got to do Line staff at an encampment. That was a choice I regret, but that's life. Never got to do Color Guard comp. Either, and I took 3 years to get my Mitchell.