Riverhead NJROTC drill team takes top honors at Mattituck meet
Riverhead’s Naval Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps drill team took home first place at a drill meet in Mattituck Saturday.
The meet, sponsored by the Southold/Greenport/Mattituck NJROTC, is a qualifying match for the Area 4 regional meet to be held next May in Middletown, N.Y.
Lt. Commander Amanda Gallo, who serves as executive officer for the Riverhead unit, said Riverhead frequently wins the annual North Fork meet.
“We’re really precise about what we need to work on,” she said in an interview Sunday. “Drill is about paying attention to all the details.”
Ms. Gallo said members of the unit were disappointed with their performance at a drill in Bethel, Conn. about a month ago and were determined to shine in Mattituck on Saturday.
“We didn’t win as many trophies as we wanted to,” she said of last month’s meet.
The unit has 50 members, but just 35 of them competed in Saturday’s meet. The meet, which lasted from about 9 a.m. to about 2:30 p.m., consisted of academic tests for seniors and freshmen, marching in platoons with and without rifles, inspections for freshmen and seniors, color guard and a tug-of=war contest.
Ten schools took part in the competition. Linden High School in New Jersey took second place and Bethel High School in Connecticut took third place.
Ms. Gallo said the next meet will be held in late January in the William Floyd School District.
Mattituck NJROTC was unable to compete Saturday because the unit was hosting the event.
