This year, the U.S. Army’s top drill sergeants had to do more than hurl toe-curling insults and foam at the mouth like ferocious, rabid wolves. On Wednesday, the service wrapped up an intensive 72-hour competition to determine the Army’s best broad-brimmed hat-wearing men and women, announcing the contest’s first winners since the service brought recruiting and initial training under the same three-star command.
Staff Sgt. Noel Berges, of Leesburg, Virginia, was named the 2026 U.S. Army Drill Sergeant of the Year, and Sgt. 1st Class Kevin Harrington, of Mauldin, South Carolina, won the title for the U.S. Army Reserve after the days-long competition at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
Gone are the days when calling basic trainees “maggots” and screaming until spit flecks hit their sweaty faces might have been enough to make a drill sergeant stand out amongst their peers. Now, the Army mandates that the noncommissioned officers who prepare future soldiers to enter the force must be physically fit teachers, coaches and speakers, capable of evaluating future soldiers on training that might one day be the difference between life and death.
Command Sergeant Major Joseph W. Wilson, the senior enlisted leader for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, or USAREC, said the winning drill sergeant would “be a critical thinker” who identifies problems and comes up with solutions.
Ahead of the competition, he told Military Times in an interview that he was looking for “a well-rounded drill sergeant, not just somebody who’s physically fit and looks good on paper. I’m looking for someone that has thoughts and ideas, and can effectively communicate them not only to the command here but to the force.”
Harrington — one of the winners — echoed that sentiment.
“To be a drill sergeant means you are a coach; you are a mentor. You are a father; you are a chaplain. You are everything and anything to the trainees and future soldiers of America,” he said in the Army release that announced his selection Wednesday.
Army drill sergeants are typically mid-career noncommissioned officers assigned to teach new trainees as a broadening assignment. After recruiters, drill sergeants are among the first to mold new soldiers.
“Decades from now, soldiers will forget many names, but they will never forget the name, the face, or the standards of their drill sergeant,” Wilson said in the release.
The 2026 Drill Sergeant of the Year competition tested competitors on their ability to lead fitness exercises, teach military formations, instruct new marksmen on a range of weapons, treat hot-weather casualties and more. Contestants also took written examinations on military regulations and history.
Fourteen competitors from training locations across the force — from 13 active-duty and reserve units — participated in the three-day event, testing their skills in 34 graded events, including interviews before a board.
Photos of the competition showed the highest of high-and-tight haircuts and uniforms with not a single thread out of place.
The competition’s two winners will begin leadership roles at Fort Knox as the command’s basic-training experts, attending public engagements and traveling to different training sites to observe and make recommendations to the command’s leadership. The two will also lead planning for the 2027 competition.
In 2025, as part of a sweeping Army modernization effort, USAREC became the service’s “force generation command,” overseeing the pipeline that turns civilians into soldiers. Headquartered at Fort Knox, the command now falls under the Transformation and Training Command, or T2COM, which was activated earlier in the year to streamline force structure.
USAREC also now oversees the Army Recruiting Division, Cadet Command and the Army Enterprise and Marketing Office, effectively becoming responsible for the first Army advertisement a potential soldier sees to the end of that recruit’s basic training.
In the interview, Wilson said the command is working toward being fully operational, but so far the streamlined approach has enabled its leadership to better balance recruiter and drill sergeant billets.
“I can see the recruiter strength, and I can see the drill sergeant strength,” he said, adding that leadership is able to see when they will need drill sergeants with particular military specialties at different places and plan accordingly. “It allows us to kind of flex where we send those drill sergeants.”
The change has allowed the command to restructure recruiter billets, Wilson said, giving the Army a new pool of soldiers who can serve in the operational force, as instructors or maybe as drill sergeants.
According to the U.S. Army Recruiting Division, the service increased the number of recruiters in previous fiscal years by around 1,200 soldiers and is now reducing those billets. In fiscal 2025 and 2026, the service said it returned approximately 500 of those soldiers.
In fiscal 2027, the Army said the “remaining surged recruiters will fulfill their recruiting obligations and be returned to the Army.”
Though he was a drill sergeant, Wilson never participated in the competition. He told Military Times that he wishes he had.
After serving as an infantryman, Wilson said the assignment was his earliest experience working closely with other specialties.
“When you’re young, your MOS is the only one that matters,” he said, adding that for the first time he was working with engineers and human resources specialists — not just other infantrymen.
“It really broadened my aperture and made me appreciate what everyone else does in the Army,” he said.
Eve Sampson is a reporter and former Army officer. She has covered conflict across the world, writing for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
