Sanderson JROTC Students Get to Know the Air Force
 Sanderson cadets climb wall at Camp Butner Army National Guard facility obstacle course. |
January 20, 2011 - Students who sign up for the Air Force Junior ROTC program at Sanderson High are held to high standards and enjoy a number of JROTC activities during the school year.
Col. Bob Penny and TSgt Susan Croom work with the students to set individual, school and community goals. This year the students are seeking to achieve an average GPA of 3.0 or higher with at least 10 students in the National Honor Society and 15 in Kitty Hawk Air Society, and to have 100 percent of seniors graduating on time and then getting accepted to college, enlisting, or getting a full-time job. The cadets will work to increase unit enrollment to 170 or above with at least 70 freshmen cadets entering the corps and having 75 percent of the corps participating in school-wide service clubs, student organizations, or athletics. The cadets are seeking to increase participation in community service to 120 cadets, service hours performed to 2,500 and fund-raising hours to 1,000.
The JROTC students have taken part in competitive drill teams, as well as leadership labs at Camp Butner and curriculum-in-action trips to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base and the Airborne and Special Operations Museum.
At the Camp Butner Army National Guard facility, all 28 Sanderson senior cadets spent the day getting to know each other better and to work as a team. The students completed a course with high and low obstacles. The most challenging was a 12-foot wall they had to complete as a team. The dirtiest was crawling under a 20-yard barbed wire obstacle to enter a simulated building.
At Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, 10 of the cadets flew with a KC-135 Tanker crew and watched as a C-17 was refueled in flight. Cadets Devin Ayscue, David Bailey, Mark Chandler, Billy Fetzner, Tyler Hill, Law K'Pru, Mitchell Lester, Adrian Rodriguez, Cheyenne Scheetz, and Eric Weekman joined other high school and college students for a briefing by the flight crew on safety equipment and procedures. Cadets observed in-flight refueling and heard all radio communication associated with the mission. Cadets were allowed to sit in the pilots’ seats and see how the boom operator connected the refueling boom with the C-17 receiving fuel.
At the Airborne & Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville, TSgt. Croom and Coach Ransone led a group of first term freshmen to see how men and women in the Army and Air Force have worked together performing the airborne mission. Cadets got to experience airborne operations from WW II to Operation Desert Storm. They also got an action-packed ride on the motion simulator seeing and feeling the challenges airborne and special ops troops face every day like freefalling from 10,000 feet and flying nap-of-the-earth on the skids of an AH-6 helicopter.
The JROTC student drill team has earned second place and six place finishes in drill meets held at NC State University and West Montgomery High. The drill team is commanded by Cadet/Lt. Col. Alora Santos. Vice commander is Cadet/Maj. William Tucker.
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| Sanderson JROTC Cadet Devin Ayscue beside the boom operator in a KC-135 Tanker observing in-flight refueling of a C-17 Transport. |
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