By Samira Pozo Robinson
On May 3, Passaic High School’s very own NJROTC headed out to Daytona Beach, Florida for the most intense drill team competition of the year. The team has practiced consistently and diligently all year for this event.
The drive was a total of 22 hours with a few stops along the way. When the buses arrived the next day, students were not immediately settled into the hotel, but practiced for an hour before checking in.
The following day on May 5, the NJROTC was off to compete with multitudes of schools. The team marched into Ocean Center, where the competition would be taking place. The categories that the team took part in were unarmed regulation, inspection, color guard, and exhibition. They also competed in armed color guard, unarmed exhibition and regulation.
While other teams are competing, the rest are preparing and practicing for when their time comes. Both unarmed and armed did an amazing job at inspection, regulation, exhibition and color guard. They were all sharp with each command. The team marched and performed with confidence and pride.
At the award ceremony, they announced the teams who placed. Unarmed received fifth place for regulation and unarmed commander received second place.
Jenssix Roman, a freshman that competed in unarmed regulations, exhibition and inspection stated, “We did well in exhibition, but I felt nervous for inspection because there are people coming up to you and all the pressure is on you.” Alexander Aquino on the other hand claims that he found it “easy and I didn’t feel as much pressure as last year.”
Sophomore cadet, Jessie Pimental competed in most events and claims that she felt “excited and every year just gets better.”
Also competing at Nationals was cadet Jennifer Yumiguano claims, “Even though, I knew I was ready and our practice was going to pay off, I was still nervous because of all the other great schools that attended.”
Freshman Cadet, Johannie Jiminan competed for the first time this year and said “although it was very hard and she scary because it was a lot of pressure, especially during Inspection, but there was a lot of people there in our team helping everyone with nerves and getting ready for each event.”
The event came to an end; unarmed regulation and their Commander Abe Jaramillo placed in the national competition.
The end of Nationals was also the last competition many of the senior cadets of NJROTC were going to attend.
As the Passaic NJROTC left nationals with a sense of pride and greater respect not only to the program, but their instructors and cadets, they also said goodbye to friendships built on the love for drill and practicing for hours on end to be the best they can be.
As seniors said their goodbyes, new cadets were ready to face the challenge to go back to Passaic and next year come back new and improved.
