Our Army and Navy Academy Cadets won seven trophies at a regional drill competition in Anaheim earlier this month.
Taking part December 2 in a Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) “Rookies Drill Meet” at Katella High School, the Academy’s Military Drill Team competed with 14 other high school JROTC units in Armed and Unarmed Regulation Drill (with and without drill rifles), Color Guard, and Armed and Unarmed Tap-Out exercises. Tap-Out competition involves cadets in large formations being judged on how well they execute specific drill commands. Those who execute commands incorrectly during the competition are eliminated from continuing to compete.
The awards included two unit-level awards and five individual awards in Armed Tap-Out competition. First place went to Cadet Samuel Wahl while second- through fifth-place awards were won respectively by Adam Friedman, Eric Carlson-Zhang, Holden Nguyen, and Reid Zeiber. Other cadets taking part in the unit awards were Mu-En Hsu, Jiawei Liang, Christian Crawford, Benjamin Bartrim, and Yidong Lou.
Founded in 1910, the Army and Navy Academy is located on an ocean-front campus in Carlsbad, Calif. The academy is a private not-for-profit Gurian Model School that provides a college preparatory curriculum alongside a leadership and character development program for young men, grades 7-12. The academy’s mission is “to educate, mentor and develop leadership and good character in young men.”
Candace Heidenrich is the CEO of Aperture Advisory Associates, where she works with private secondary and higher education leaders to strengthen programs and practices. She founded Aperture in 2018 after more than a decade in a senior administrative role at a boarding school in California. Additionally, she held faculty and chair positions at private schools and colleges in Los Angeles and Ojai. Her background also includes director and executive level positions with start-ups and Fortune 500 corporations.
While earning her B.A. in Education and Humanities in the Lawrence Henry Gipson Scholar program, she studied abroad at Oxford before pursuing her master’s at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A frequent speaker at national conferences, she is a recognized thought leader and authority on enrollment management and marketing best practices.