The Wainwright Rifle Team: The Oldest of the Corps’ Special Teams

BY BETHANY KILPATRICKContributing Writer

The Wainwright Rifle Team was founded in 1949 and is one of six Special Teams within The Texan Corps of Cadets organization at Tarleton State University.

Cadet Corporal Kolby Roberts is a sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering in the Corps. He is on the Marine Platoon Leaders Class (PLC) pathway and participates on the Bataan Team and The Wainwright Rifle Team.

“The Wainwright Rifle Team is essentially D&C, which stands for Drill and Ceremony, which is a big part of the military,” Roberts said.

Cadet First Lieutenant Nic Lopez is a senior within the Corps who plans to commission into the Marine Corps in the spring. He is in charge of training other cadets on the Marine PLC pathway and is one of the team instructors for the Wainwright Rifle Team. 

“We do exhibition, which is the spinning rifles at homecoming. What I teach them is regulation drill.” Lopez said. “If you saw the sword arches for homecoming, I was in charge of that one. I teach them how to do normal rifle manuals, which is moving the rifle when you are walking.”

With his personal experience, Lopez leads the team in a highly productive manner. 

“I will add that my experience for teaching drill comes from the Marine Corps.  I have done a lot of training with Marines, so that is why I know how to teach everything,” Lopez said.

Cadets on the team learn a vast set of skills.

“We learn how to spin rifles, and specifically, that includes fancy tricks,” Roberts said. “Most of them are pretty basic, that most everybody can learn, which is kind of fun, but whenever you get into the more advanced stuff you can get into spins and some behind the back and over the head motions.”

Gabriel Wendtland is a duck (freshman) in the Corps. He is a general business major, is on the Marine PLC pathway and also participates on the rifle team. He believes that spinning is the hardest skill to master.

“There is a lot of hand-eye coordination, catching and launching,” Wendtland said.

The Wainwright Rifle Team is the oldest of the Special Teams within the Corps and holds a rich history.

“Wainwright was actually a pilot in World War II, and he graduated from Tarleton. We use his name for our team.” Roberts said. 

The team participates and performs in multiple events throughout the year. 

“We partake in yell contest, Veteran’s Day 21-gun salute, Silver Taps and Sabre Guard for homecoming,” Lopez said. “Then we have a retreat ceremony with the Corps of Cadets on the first Monday of every month, and then various color guards for football games and stuff.”

Any cadet may join the team, however, only a handful of members will get to participate in performances.

“There is not a tryout process for the team,” Cadet Lopez said. “The tryout process is more for details. We pick them for that because we can’t have them all doing it at once. It is just whoever is performing the best and putting in the best effort.”

Members of the team practice multiple times a week on Dyess Field in the evening.

“We practice pretty much every day,” Roberts said. “For Yell, since the beginning of the school year, the freshmen were getting trained on the basics and the upperclassmen are getting trained on sequences that we will be doing.”

Discipline is the key to succeeding on the team.

“With us being the premiere D&C team, it is super important that whenever we are standing there, someone is making announcements, we are doing movements or whatever the biggest thing is, we need to make sure that we are showing the best of the best of ourselves,” Roberts said.  “If we are standing at attention, and our nose starts to run or if we have an itch, we can’t itch it, because that shows you are breaking bearing, and we are the perfect golden standard.”

As an instructor for the team, Lopez faces challenges of his own. 

“I would say for them the most challenging part is staying still for a long period of time, and then for me, it is probably my voice,” Lopez said.

Most recently, the team provided a 21-gun salute ceremony outside the Erath County  Courth House on Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11,  2024.