Raiders is a competition that JROTC competes in. The team consists of a mixture of boys and girls and they compete in five different courses. What it means to be a Raider is defined differently by each member.
“I’d say it’s more of a mental state like you pushing your body as hard as you can on every event, when running, or carrying things,” Jayson Holguin, Public Service senior said. “It’s a mental battle, but not just for yourself, but as a team, as a family.”
Uriel Gurrola, Health senior, has a similar, but more formal definition.
“A Raider is a physically fit group of cadets making up a team of either all males, all females, or even mixed. These teams will compete in five events in one day while also keeping loyalty to the team and going by the core values of duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage,” Gurrola said.
The Raiders have qualified for Nationals with their scores on the last competition.
“The boys and girls placed third overall, and the ultimate Raider, which is me, I placed third for the first time ever from anyone in Garden City High School,” Gurrola said.
The Raiders travel around to different states for their competitions.
“We went to Pike’s Peak, Leavenworth, Ozark, and Wichita,” Holguin said.
The Raiders practice everyday after school.
“We have practice every day. It usually goes from 3:30 to 5, but some days it’s longer. On occasions, we do a mixture between running, lifting, or agility training. More specifically, we do the obstacle course outside, we go to the cardio room with intervals of 12 minutes for each station, and we have a weightlifting day. We don’t lift hard, but we do reps. We rep the bar for a minute, then two minutes, then three minutes,” Martin said.
The Raiders are always training and Holguin has some things that he thinks everyone should work on to further succeed in Nationals.
“I’d say more dedication, more hard work mentally. At least pushing yourself as far as you can. Also building each other together, not separate. We can’t say we need to work on this guy, or this guy. We need to work on the whole team, that’s the problem,” Holguin said.
The Raiders compete in Fort Knox, Kentucky in three weeks.
