![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/drillcomp2.jpg.jpg\")
Hickey, a confinement specialist with E Company, 795th Military Police Battalion at Fort Leonard Wood, told Army Times he was \u201cvery surprised\u201d when his name was announced as the winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere was a great field out here and a whole lot of people who did a great job,\u201d said Hickey, who has served in the Army for 12 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the land navigation portion of the competition was challenging, and the ruck march pushes soldiers to the edge, but everything he has learned as a soldier helped him throughout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne of the ways I prepared for the competition was just helping soldiers out,\u201d Hickey said. \u201cTeaching them and making sure we both understood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spending four days around the other drill sergeants was also a confidence booster, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGoing into the competition, I wasn\u2019t real confident in myself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But every time he had trouble with something, the other soldiers had his back, even though he was their competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey were always there saying, \u2018Hey, you got this,\u2019\u201d Hickey said. \u201cIt helped to really push me through when I wanted to get down on myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hickey said he\u2019ll be moving to Fort Eustis in Virginia to serve as the Drill Sergeant of the Year, serving as a subject matter expert at the U.S. Army Center for Initial Military Training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ivery, a cryptologic linguist at the Presidio of Monterey in California, received the highest score on the Army Physical Fitness Test. He has served for 13 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThank you very much to all the AIT platoon sergeants who pushed me to do my best,\u201d Ivery said after receiving the award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As an AIT platoon sergeant, Ivery developed a battalion movement screening that decreased injuries by 90 percent in two months, according to the Army.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The two soldiers scored the highest marks in the four-day competition at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":85380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":12,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[100,12,25,70],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2976],"class_list":["post-46695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-army"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"SJBJWVAHYZHPRCXLXNR47KWM3Q","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/2017\/09\/15\/army-names-drill-sergeant-and-ait-platoon-sergeant-of-the-year\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/drillcomp3.jpg.jpg\")