ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Years of hard work and physical conditioning were rewarded Thursday as more than 1,000 college students were officially notified of the teams they'll be playing for after graduation. No, it wasn't the NFL draft. It was service assignmentselection day at the Naval Academy.

Midshipmen, all 1,077 seniors of them total, huddled up in their companies in Bancroft Hall to hear the news. The Class of 2016 will send 808 freshnew ensigns to the Navy and 269 2nd lieutenants to the Marine Corps next year, according to academy statistics.

Twenty-Ninth Company shook mixed up the notifications this year, gathering its 38 seniors midshipmen 1st class in a Bancroft Hall lounge room for a professional sports-style draft, calling each mid up to pose for photos with either a Navy or Marine Corps hat and jersey.

"With the first pick in the 2015 service assignment draft, the United States Marine Corps ground selects Midshipman 1st Class Jerome Alexander," Company commander Marine Capt. D.J. Green bellowed to cheers and applause.

The group's selections leaned heavily heavy toward Marine Corps and Navy aviation, with 10 mids selecting Navy pilot — four of them women — and four for naval flight officer, as well as seven Marine ground officers and three pilots.

They differed widely from the fleet-mandated numbers the Navy Department setsdetermines every year.

Service assignments for the Class of 2016:

Surface Warfare: 249

Submarines: 137

SEAL: 38

Explosive Ordnance Disposal: 15

Navy pilot: 241

Navy NFO: 79

Medical: 15

Supply: 10

Civil Engineer Corps: 5

Intelligence: 19

Information Warfare: 7

Information Professional: 2

Oceanography: 1

Marine Corps ground: 170

Marine Corps pilot: 95

Marine Corps NFO: 4

'One of the first'

While Naval Special Warfare remains closed to women pending a decision late this year, 11 female mids selected to join the submarine force, a specialty that began to be integratedion in 20112 and is set to open to enlisted women next year.

Midshipman 1st Class Samantha Steere, a Bellevue, Washington native, was a plebe planning to study engineering when women first started reporting to subs.

Steere, 21, fell in love with the community, she said, during a visit to a ballistic missile submarine the summer after her sophomore year. The following summer, she was able to visit two freshly newly-integrated VirginiaLos Angeles-class attack subs, she said, solidifying her plans.

"The officers seemed like people I would hang out with, and people I could see myself becoming one day," she told Navy Times.

She got a chance to speak to the women aboard, who had just a few months of experience under their belts at the time, to see what it was like being at the forefront of the community.

"It's exciting because I'm going to be one of the first, but then that's also scary, because if I run into problems, I don't know — really, there's no one I can ask about it, there's no one I can compare myself to," she said.

She did get contact information for the officer she spoke to, however, to ask for advice in the future.

The most glaring aspect, she said, will be her minority status on a boat, but she said being her among the only 25 percent of women that make up Annapolis' student body at the Academy experience as one of 25 percent of the brigade as a woman prepared her for that.

And the male submariners she met, she said, made her feel comfortable. Surprisingly, she said, one of their issues on the boat was being too respectful of the women.

"When the watch team is coming off of watch, they'll wake up the next rotation. So the women were saying that the men were scared to wake them up, scared to come into their rooms and nudge them," she said. "So they just kept saying, 'We're just like you, we're fine.' There's a difference between being inappropriate and doing your job."

Her decision to go subs also came on the heels of the ballistic missile sub Wyoming's shower video case, which she said she was not pleased to hear about.

But spending time in the fleet eased her worries.

"It was brought up by the men on the submarine that I was on, and they were all horrified that had happened," she said. "The majority of men in the community want women to succeed. They see the value in it."

New frontiers

The Class of 2016 is the first to graduate mids from its brand new cyber operations major. Midshipman 1st Class Zac Dannelly, one of the department's stars, will be joining the fleet as an information warfare officer.

Navy pilot-select Midshipman 1st Class Maleah Gilchrist accepts her service assignment Nov. 19 from 29th Company commander Capt. D.J. Green and Senior Chief Fire Controlman (SW) Michael Benavidez at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

Navy pilot-select Midshipman 1st Class Maleah Gilchrist accepts her service assignment Nov. 19 from 29th Company commander Capt. D.J. Green and Senior Chief Fire Controlman (SW) Michael Benavidez at the Naval Academy's service assignment day.

Photo Credit: Meghann Myers/Staff

"It's a lot of fun. Every class we take, it's the first time it's ever been offered," he told Navy Times. "We've been able to have quite a bit of say in the development of the major."

Dannelly, 22 and a Lousiville, Kentucky native, said he's a 10th-generation service member.

"So for 10 generations my family has served, and all of them have fought against whatever's threatened our values the most," he said. "Right now, it really is the cyber domain."

While others in his family have fought in Vietnam or in the war on terror, the computer science lover said he was looking forward to defending his country in cyberspace.

"I saw immediately that there was where I was going to be the link in the chain for my family," he said.

Following 29th Company's draft, mids scattered throughout Bancroft Hall to meet up with their friends. For many of the Marine-selects, it was straight to the barber chair, where a shipmate gave them a celebratory buzz cut as a voluntary ritual welcoming them to the Corps.

Future ground combat officer Midshipman 1st Class Nick Jaqua, 22, smiled as he leaned back in a folding chair in the hallway, his fellow Marine-selects gathered around him.

"I feel great," he said.

Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.

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