Laughlin AFB Honors Top Performers at Team XL Annual Awards Ceremony

Laughlin Air Force Base’s 47th Flying Training Wing hosted its Team XL Annual Awards Ceremony at XL Landings on Feb. 20, 2026, honoring top Airmen, officers, civilians and teams for performance during 2025. The base-level event, described in Laughlin Af Mil messaging, marked the wing’s annual recognition of service members and civilian employees who supported the wing’s mission across the previous year.

A Facebook post about the ceremony captured the tone of the evening, saying, "The cream of the crop always rises to the top." Social posts on Facebook and Instagram noted Team XL hosted the ceremony "last Friday" at XL Landings to recognize the top performers of 2025, and Instagram specifically mentioned "Enlisted airmen, officers" among those recognized, consistent with the base statement that civilians and teams were also honored.

The official summary in the supplied materials stated, "Laughlin Air Force Base’s 47th Flying Training Wing hosted its Team XL Annual Awards Ceremony the week of Feb. 20, 2026, honoring top Airmen, officers, civilians and teams for performance during 2025." The same original report included a truncated line reading, "The ceremony formally recognized individual and group achievements across multiple c" which was preserved in the source package and indicates additional category detail was omitted from the excerpt provided to this newsroom.

The supplied materials do not include a winners list, award citations, presenters' names for the Feb. 20, 2026 event, or official quotes from base leadership about the 2025 awardees. For historical context, a separate DVIDS gallery entry and image metadata in the packet show a prior 47th FTW awards ceremony tied to fiscal year 2023. That DVIDS caption documents U.S. Air Force Col. Kevin Davidson and Chief Master Sgt. Lester Largaespada presenting Maj. Stephen Crump an award during the 2023 47th FTW Annual Awards Ceremony at Laughlin AFB on Feb. 2, 2024. The DVIDS image is credited to Senior Airman Kailee Reynolds and carries Photo ID 8229988 and VIRIN 240202-F-SC207-1005, with recorded web views of 24 and downloads of 3.

The materials supplied from Laughlin Af Mil and social media establish the date and venue for the 2026 Team XL ceremony and confirm the broad classes of personnel honored for 2025 performance, but they stop short of naming individual winners or award categories. That absence leaves details about which units, ranks, and civilian roles were recognized at the Feb. 20, 2026 event unresolved in the current record. The ceremony underscores the wing’s practice of annual recognition for operational and support contributions, and additional release information from Laughlin public affairs would be needed to report the full roster of 2025 awardees and their specific accomplishments.