JROTC Leadership Team Washington Bound

(by Matt Pedigo, The Citizen-Times, March 10, 2016, Used with Permission)

   To civic-minded Americans, this may sound like a dream tour package. Indeed, four young men from Allen County-Scottsville High School will get to experience some of these this summer—having earned a chance to make some national and international history of their own.

   AC-S Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps members Cpl. Robert Ethan Miller, Capt. Brandon Thompson, 1st Lt. Jacob Herald and Capt. Gabe McGuffey will compete for an international championship. They are among 40 JROTC Leadership teams—out of 1,378 JROTC teams in America and other nations that competed in opening rounds—to earn marks high enough to enjoy an all-expenses-paid (except for souvenirs) trip to the nation’s capitol, where they will compete in the College Options Foundation’s 2015 JROTC Leadership and Academic Bowl (JLAB) Championships. The competition will be held on The Catholic University of America’s campus this June 24-28.

   “This is huge; it’s worldwide, not just the US,” AC-S JROTC Commander Col. Ron Turner noted.

   Now in just its fifth year of existence, the AC-S JROTC program is fielding its second international competition team. In 2013, the AC-S JROTC Academic team of Keith Jones, Kyla Turner, Shania Saylors and Stephanie McGlothlin, was able to win three of the nine contests they participated in. While an AC-S JROTC Academic Team has gone, this will be the first JLAB appearance for the chapter’s Leadership Team.

   The programs’ co-commander, Sgt. Maj. Joey Simpson, noted that JROTC seniors cannot compete in JLAB; it must be juniors or below. Of the current team, Thompson, Herald and McGuffey are all juniors; Miller is a freshman.

   “We’re proud of them,” Simpson said. “Everybody is proud of what they’ve accomplished. They’ve worked really hard and put in a lot of hours.”

   Freshman Cpl. Ethan Miller is the 14-year-old son of Bob Miller and Barbara Miller. He’s undecided on his future plans, but is considering the Army as a backup plan. And by then, he’ll have leadership experience—as Thompson points out, when he, McGuffey and Herald are no longer juniors and thus can’t compete in JLAB anymore. Miller will head the rebuilding of the team for future competitions.

   “Each year, it’s a clean slate,” Thompson said.

  “I’m worrying,” Miller admits. “But with the counsel of previous members, I know it’s something that can be done.”

   For this program it would hardly be unprecedented. Simpson notes that last year’s Leadership Team came very close to earning a JLAB appearance, and the current team credits them with laying the foundation to help put them over the top this year.

   Junior First Lt. Jacob Herald, the 16-year-old son of Sherrill and Linda Herald, said he hadn’t originally planned on entering the military; he was interested in what many analysts say will be hot job-market trades in the near future: Machinery and robotics. However, Herald says his JROTC experiences have been very positive, and he’s now more seriously considering entering the military, where he may be able to have both.

   “If I do go in, I want to work in robotics,” he said.

   Junior Capt. Brandon Thompson, the 16-year-old son of Jeff and Rita Thompson, said he definitely hopes to enter the Army, following in the footsteps of many of his family members and ancestors who have served, including a grandfather who fought in World War II from Tunisia to the end of the war in Germany.

   Junior Capt. Gabe McGuffey, the 18-year-old son of Danny and the late Deborah McGuffey, said he has no military background, but is considering the National Guard as well as post-secondary school. He too was influenced by his JROTC experiences.

   “I fell in love with what we do here,” McGuffey said. said.

  Simpson said the team’s accomplishments to reach the JLAB international competition threshold involved mastery of classroom JROTC leadership curriculum (which includes study of the human brain) as well as independent study, decision-making and group-interpersonal interactions.

   “We worked as a team,” McGuffey said. “Everyone did their fair share.”

   “It’s really amazing,” Herald adds. “It’s amazing what can be done when we work together. It’s an impressive feat.”

   The team members credit McGuffey with taking the initiative to create a slide deck, featuring 1,000 slides of materials for the team to study, which helped them maximize study time of needed materials. This helped a team that didn’t have as much time to devote to this as other teams still compete with and beat other teams.

   Preparing for the next level will include online work; Simpson said materials were due in anytime for the team to begin working on. JLAB’s non-profit host, the College Options Foundation, uses such competitions as well as college-level exam study guides, tutorials and counseling to help prepare JROTC students for the next level in life as well, according to a press release on the JLAB competition.

   Simpson said the JLAB competition will be multi-tiered. The competition’s first day is an exercise in teamwork: A scavenger hunt in the National Mall and Arlington National Cemetery. Day two features a Quiz Bowl competition; day three is the championship round. Simpson said the team will go a day early to see a slate of educational attractions in the District of Columbia.

   So how does the team feel as they prepare to go in?

   “It’s a free trip to Washington!” McGuffey laughs. He adds, “We’re excited. “We’re representing our school.”

   “We’re representing the state itself,” Herald adds. “We’re the only Kentucky school going.”

   In addition to the skills learned, the trip will mean personal growth in other ways—most of the team hasn’t traveled much yet in their young lives. For McGuffey, it will be his first airplane flight. Thompson has only been to two other states besides Kentucky; this will be his longest trip yet.

   “I’ve never been on an airplane before,” adds Thompson, who hopes to become a paratrooper. “This is coming from someone who wants to jump out of them.”

   Regardless of what happens at JLAB, team members say the JROTC program as a whole has had a very positive impact on their lives. Thompson said JROTC has opened a lot of doors for him, and taught him to set and meet goals and have higher expectations for himself.

   “It changes you as a person,” McGuffey said. “You see people change. You see yourself change. You try to set an example for others. I was shy coming in; then I started making friends and meeting people. I consider them (fellow JROTC members) like family.”

   Herald echoes that.

  “Each separate platoon in JROTC is like a family,” he said. “My platoon is part of that family. We get together, work out our problems and get along. It’s amazing to see what we can accomplish when we put our differences aside and work together.”

   That teamwork includes the instructors.

   “To lead, you have to be a good follower,” McGuffey said.

   “I want to thank our instructors, and all the people who have supported us along the way,” Miller said.

   In addition, McGuffey noted someone else to thank.

   “I prayed. I owe this to the grace of God, and the people around me. I’m blessed to have you all,” he told the team.

   And that teamwork continues to bear fruit; Col. Turner sums up the program’s second international competition appearance in just five years of existence.

   “Our kids here in Allen County can compete with anybody,” he said. “That’s what this says.”