Courtesy of NavySports.com
By MATT MUZZA, Navy Sports Information
The city of Annapolis is typically very quiet at 6:00 a.m. on a summer weekday. As the sun slowly rises over the glassy waters of the Annapolis Harbor, there is a stillness to the streets of Maryland’s capital. However, inside the walls of the U.S. Naval Academy there is a flurry of activity, and Navy men’s basketball senior guard Grant Vermeer is at its center as the Regimental Commander of Plebe Summer.
Plebe Summer is six-week training program that turns incoming freshmen, or plebes, into trained midshipmen who are indoctrinated into the ways of the Naval Academy and are ready to join the Brigade of Midshipmen at the start of the academic year.
Beginning on Induction Day on June 30, the nearly 1,200 plebes are put through their training by approximately 250 upperclassmen detailers. The chain of command amongst the detailers is headed by the regimental staff. At the top of the regimental staff is the Regimental Commander, and during the second set of the 2016 Plebe Summer, that position was filled by Vermeer.
Vermeer helped the Navy basketball team to a 19-14 record this past season and he has appeared in 39 career games with 10 starts. The Mountain View, California native was named to the National Association of Basketball Coaches Honors Court due to his 3.43 cumulative grade-point average as a cyber operations major.
“My job as the Plebe Summer Regimental Commander was to ensure the overall safety, welfare and execution of the training of the fourth class and the personnel in the fourth class regiment,” said Vermeer. “I was the tone-setter and set the overall command climate. I was the person who had to make sure things were running smoothly.”
The upperclassmen in Plebe Summer are either in the regimental staff or the company staff. The detailers in the company staff are tasked with the hands-on, day-to-day training of the plebes. The regimental staff supports and guides the detailers.
“My job was to help the detailers, the people that are doing the hands-on work,” said Vermeer. “I was there to help make their training more effective and more efficient. To support them in their roles and to help them with their problems. My role was to help others and to serve my people.”
In his role as Regimental Commander, Vermeer received the unique opportunity to practice peer leadership on a large scale. In order to effectively oversee Plebe Summer, Vermeer had to have the support of the upperclassmen detailers that were under his command.
“I asked the detailers to first be a good person and to treat everyone with dignity and respect,” said Vermeer. “Second was to have a positive attitude. Have an enthusiasm and a positivity that is infectious, motivating and inspiring. That way, the plebes know you wanted to be there and that you cared about the training. The third thing was to give 100 percent effort all the time. I wanted this to be an opportunity to practice exhaustive leadership. So by the time we were done, you knew you gave everything you have to help these people grow into who they are going to become.”
Another way Vermeer supported the plebes and the detailers in the company staff was through the power of presence. Since the regimental staff is not as involved in the day-to-day, hands-on training of the plebes, it can be challenging to understand the problems the company staffs are having. To remedy this, Vermeer made being present at different training evolutions a priority.
“It’s a lot easier for someone to tell you something is going wrong or they need something changed or fixed if you are in their company area,” Vermeer said. “They aren’t always going to seek you out because they are also busy. If you are present you get a better sense of what is really going on and the struggles they are facing. You can better help them and make things more efficient.”
Being open to the concept of supporting others and letting others help you is one of the reasons Vermeer has been so successful at the Naval Academy. Vermeer experienced his own struggles at the Naval Academy as a plebe.
“I was so worried about myself that I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture,” said Vermeer. “I had some role models that helped me shift my mindset from `me’ to `we’ and to adopt a team mentality. I stopped worrying about myself so much and started to really appreciate the people around me. That’s when things started to get better.”
Knowing that he was part of something bigger than himself and embracing the mission of the Naval Academy helped him not only get through his own plebe year, but also to flourish as a midshipman.
“The people here are phenomenal,” said Vermeer. “Whether it’s the students, the faculty or the officer staff. Everyone here is dedicated to the overall development of every person at this school. I’m a big believer that it’s not what you do, it’s who you do it with. And I know now that there is not a different group of people that I want to do something with than the people that are at this school.”
Some of those people played a big role Vermeer seeking out and successfully serving as the Regimental Commander. In addition to the support of basketball head coach Ed DeChellis, former teammate Kevin Alter, who served as a Plebe Summer Battalion Commander in 2014, encouraged Vermeer to get involved with Plebe Summer training.
Additionally, Vermeer worked under Cmdr. Michael Murnane, who was the officer in charge of Plebe Summer and is Vermeer’s battalion officer during the academic year.
“I learned an immense amount about leadership from Cmdr. Murnane,” said Vermeer. “That positivity, enthusiasm and energy that he brought every day was fantastic. The positive impact that he had on my life was incredible. I admire him so much as a person and as a leader.”
Vermeer also credits his Plebe Summer Executive Officer (XO), Matt Meltzer, and the regimental staff as critical in ensuring the effectiveness of Vermeer’s own position. The regimental staff involves everyone embracing their role and contributing to an overall team effort.
“The people on the regimental staff are the people making everything happen,” said Vermeer. “They are the `doers.’ They are the people that really make it all work. My XO, Matt Meltzer, was phenomenal. He made my job easy. He allowed me to do what my job entailed and he set me up for success in being as great as he was.”
Vermeer will apply the lessons he learned from his role of Regimental Commander of Plebe Summer when he graduates from the Naval Academy next spring and is commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy or Marine Corps.
“The purpose of the Naval Academy is to give you that leadership experience to get you ready to lead a division, platoon or squad out in the fleet,” said Vermeer. “When you get out into the fleet, the people you are going to be leading are extremely diverse. Everybody comes for different reasons, they are from different parts of the country, they all have different family situations. So to be the person who is there to take care of and lead these people and help develop them on their path and their journey is a really exciting thought.
“To think, as a 22-year-old person who just graduated from college you’re going to be making a positive impact and a positive influence on a lot of people’s lives. You are going to be directly responsible for the development, training, welfare and safety of your people. To have that opportunity and responsibility is something that I am extremely excited for.”
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