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PRESENT COLORS. Members of the Color Guard led by sophomore Gabriella Basile, present the colors at the homecoming game.

The AFJROTC corps has been a distinguished unit with merit for nine years. Their mission is to develop citizens of character dedicated to serving their nation and community. There is no military obligation to join. It offers skills that students will benefit from for the rest of their life.

“I’ve seen students that have grown and become strong leaders and that’s where we are lacking, in my opinion, in our country at times is leadership and I think it builds leaders,” Principal Eric King said.  “Leadership is a very hard thing to do. And what the JROTC program does is model a military structured program to where you have to do a little more and go that extra mile. It teaches them to not be in the crowd, to be above the crowd. We talk about ‘raising the bar’ and it gets our students to raise the bar personally in terms of who they are.” 

Kittyhawk is a team of tutors that offer help to cadets whenever they need. The group is dependent on helping each other and not letting their peers fail.

“I know a lot of students get tutoring from them,” freshman Alexia Recio said. “People have started passing their classes well because of their tutoring.” 

The unit is a cadet-run program meaning students direct other students. The cadets make their own decisions and go by the chain of command before they reach the teacher. The instructors only guide, advise, and deal with the big decisions behind the scenes. 

“I like that our corps is a cadet-run program,” sophomore Jada White said. “It shows us and others that we can step up to the plate even though we’re teens. We can run something and have expectations about mostly everything that we do. It’s not like we can lollygag off. There’s rules and standards that you have to set for this corps.” 

Leadership is a major aspect of the detachment. JROTC instills good character traits into students by allowing them enough freedom to make mistakes and learn from them; with the help from instructors and friends. 

“Overall the corps has taught me how important being a leader to someone is and how you can impact their day to day,” senior Joseph Sheldon said. “ Recognizing how you can mold them into a person that they didn’t even think was possible.”