How to teach my section the importance of practice/proper technique?

[mareike]

Hey everyone:) I'm currently serving my third year as flute section leader in my high school's marching band. In past years we've had issues in our section dealing with horn angles, tuning, and keeping hips/the flute parallel to the sideline, but it all came together in the end (minus the intonation). This year though? Holy cannoli my section is a train wreck and I need ideas on how to at least partially rectify the issue.

The main issues I'm really trying to focus on within my section at the moment are the hips being parallel to the sideline when sliding left or right, marching on the correct foot, and not moving on a hold even when you don't make it to your spot in time.

For marching on the correct foot, I believe it stems from an issue we discovered at band camp within my freshmen of not being able to march on the beat. When doing drills at band camp, myself and a woodwinds technician had them count out loud and subdivide while marching, and had them play scales on the beat while we clapped along with a variety of other exercises. In addition, I also sent them a dancing tutorial via our groupchat that dealt with being able to identify and keep the beat. While the freshmen have come an astronomically long way since band camp, they didn't really start making much improvement until we (myself and the new flute section leader) threatened to call them out by name in block. It's just that when we're setting drill for the show I notice that a few of them are stepping with their right foot during a move when they should be stepping with their left (they seem to be losing time or dragging tempo when marching) and so far all I have done is shout "left, left, left!" on the correct beat. I've told them that left foot is always on beat one and I show them how to correct themselves if they find themselves getting off track, and at this point I'm not sure what else to do (I have made my director aware of the issue but he hasn't been much help). I'm thinking of just threatening to call them out by name if I see it keep happening, but wanted some opinions and to see if anyone had a better or perhaps a more positive idea.

For hips being parallel, we went over it in band camp and I've reviewed it with them and had them demonstrate it back to me in order to show their understanding. They know how to do it if that's what they're focusing on, but they seem to completely forget about it when we're setting a drill or marching the show at a performance (they walk pretty much diagonally to their spot and not sideways marching). I don't know how else to express this concept to them at this point besides sending them a link to our old show so they can see how obvious it looks, which I did this afternoon (will see if it did anything this Thursday). Any tips would be appreciated for this because it is bad:(

For the moving on a hold, they arrive maybe 6 inches or something off of their spot and so then they feel the need to shuffle into their spot the first few beats of the hold. I'm going to be blunt- it's so obvious and it will even be more noticeable when they add the bright white shakos to the top of our hats. Again, I've just tried to emphasize the concept of not doing this and have sent them a link to an old show where you could obviously see people trying to get away with it. I just don't know what else to do

In the end I think it just narrows down to an issue of people saying "it's not me" when it clearly is them (even for the smallest things, like when I make a general comment to them about counting out loud when we're supposed to be and they (specifically the freshmen) tell me that they just count quietly (how do you count at all when your mouth is closed??)). I've tried talking to the band director who has said just try to implement the compliment-critique-compliment technique (which I had already been applying/still am doing). At this point ANY advice is welcomed because I just want to help our section succeed and I've completely exhausted all of the ideas that I've had:((