The Marion High School JROTC Raider Team performed in their first competition of the season at Eastern Kentucky University.
After competing against 26 other teams, the Raiders finished third.
“We have never competed here before, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect,” said Cadet Tayler Garriott, the Raider Team captain and a senior at Marion High School. “Several of the events we were never able to practice before. So, finishing third overall was a good finish.”
The Giants faced several traditional Raider events at the competition, including the fitness challenge, litter carry, and one-rope bridge. However, two other events, the rubber raft race and the iron sphere toss, were unfamiliar to them.
To complete the rubber raft event, the cadets had to paddle an inflatable raft around a specified course in a pond. For the iron sphere throw, the cadets had to toss an iron sphere at targets 30 and 60 meters away.
“The cadets performed very well, and the competition gave us a good assessment of where we are as a team,” said retired Lt. Col. David Farlow, the teams’ coach and senior Army instructor for the MHS JROTC program. “This was a particularly showing, given that we chose to compete four females in most of the events, while teams were only required to compete one female as part of a 10-cadet team. This was a conscious decision on our part because we used this competition to help us prepare our team for the up-coming Raider State and National Championships later this fall. In both those competitions, the teams must compete four females in each event.”
During the competition, the Giants easily turned in the fastest combined one-miles run time, and also earned third-place finishes in both the fitness and the litter carrying events.
The next competition for the Raiders will be in Dayton, Ohio, on Sept. 28.
