Paloma Valley NJROTC Drill Team Qualifies for Nationals

For the first time in the school’s history, Paloma Valley High School’s NJROTC drill team has qualified for Nationals.

The team will travel across the country to Camp Pensacola in Florida to compete in this prestigious event April 10-11 against the top programs in the United States. In order to make the trip, the drill team is looking for fundraising help from the community.

NJROTC, which stands for Navy Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, is a program that focuses on teaching leadership and responsibility to high school students based on the ideals of the military, and the Navy in particular. The Paloma Valley unit of the NJROTC is comprised of around 200 cadets, led by Master Sergeant Frank Puebla.

"This program is actually a program that revolves around citizenship and character building," said Puebla. "It is less about the military and more about the attributes that the military is known for, like discipline, teamwork, focus, responsibility, accountability, things of that nature."

The NJROTC at Paloma Valley has many different teams, including drill teams, an academic team, a physical fitness team and an orienteering group. There is no requirement to be in the program, other than maintaining a 2.0 GPA in order to participate in competitions.

"There’s so many things that this program can do," said Puebla. "Everyone is welcome to join the program. As a matter of fact, that’s one of my favorite things about the program. I think we are the most diverse organization on the campus"”

The NJROTC team also volunteers throughout the community, teaching the cadets to think about others before themselves. Members have volunteered at the Kay Ceniceros Senior Center, raised money with Albertsons to provide Thanksgiving dinners for the community, and will participate in Relay for Life later this year.

"[The cadets] have a sense of community and team," said Nashelle Covington, whose son is in his third year of the NJROTC program. "They volunteer in the community. They just have a sense of others first and it's developing them to be good leaders."

In February, the Paloma Valley NJROTC drill team competed in the regional competition for Area 11, which includes high school NJROTC programs in Southern California and all of Arizona. A competition consists of different events that are graded and scored. These events include the basic drill teams armed and unarmed, in which cadets perform basic drill movements with or without a a simulated weapon. There are also exhibition teams armed and unarmed, in which cadets either flip and throw a weapon or create beats with their hands and feet.

There is also a color guard team that presents the Navy and United States colors while performing specific drill movements. The competition also includes an academic test in which cadets from each school are tested on naval science. Lastly, there is a physical fitness portion of the competition with four events: push-ups, sit-ups, a 100-yard dash, and a 220-yard run.

Each event is scored and a school’s final placing is determined by an average of its scores in each category. The Paloma Valley NJROTC placed third at this competition, qualifying the team for Nationals.

"I was really excited," said Cadet Luke Covington, a junior at Paloma Valley. "It was a really big deal for our program because it was the first time for our program specifically that we made it that far, and I was just really proud for the rest of my cadets who worked so hard and so long to try to get it, and all the work paid off. I was just really proud of everyone.”

The national competition will consist of similar aspects to that of the regional competition, but Paloma Valley will be competing against the top schools in the United States, as well as Guam, Italy and Japan. In order to prepare for the event, Puebla is learning all he can about how to approach the competition with his cadets, as well as giving the cadets extra training.

"We’re trying to hit it from many different angles to be ab"e to go over there and represent ourselves and Menifee and Paloma Valley and Area 11 with distinction,” said Puebla.

The trip to Florida does not come cheap to the NJROTC team, however. The cost is estimated at $40,000. The team is doing every type of fundraising it can in order to bring this cost down. The team will be holding a pancake breakfast in the near future, as well as car washes and a root beer float sale outside Albertsons on Scott Road.

"If we take this trip in April, it would really give us the push that we need to be big superpower in the ROTC realm and really be more prominent in this area," said Luke Covington.

"I think what they’re really doing is they’re paving the way for the school years behind them," said Puebla. "We’re not going to just hope to be with the best. Now we know that we can compete with the best and now we’re going to try to be the best."