READY FOR REPORTING: Cadets line up at the State Drill Meet.

THOMASVILLE — On March 25, 2023, the JROTC for Thomas County Central High School competed in state competition against the state’s top 50 teams in a series of drill-inspired events.

This showing is coming off the backs of what was viewed by the JROTC program as a somewhat disappointing showing in the Area Region 2 Championships, in which the Color Guard placed 2nd, while the Regulation Unarmed Squad placed third for their events.

In a team that consisted of 2 new freshman cadets, the Color Guard placed 13th out of 37 for their event. The Unarmed Regulation Squadron also did well, placing 20th out of 27 for their event with a squad consisting of 4 new cadets to the team.

Sergeant First Class Jason Dinkins, one of the supervisors for the JROTC program at TCCHS, was optimistic of the team’s results due to the relative youth and inexperience that the new cadets had.

“75 percent of our team are freshman in high school,” stated Dinkins. “Essentially, we can take an almost all freshman team and build it into a much more successful team. I would consider them to be way ahead of some of their peers at other schools who are in their sophomore, junior and senior years of high school.”

Dinkins was also equally pleased with how the team conducted themselves during state competition, and was proud of how many of the team made it into state, despite their age.

“To take that many new people to a state level competition is actually unheard of,” said Dinkins. “For them to perform as well as they did, they all did a phenomenal job.”

The JROTC program itself is also relatively young, only going into year 3 of operation within TCCHS. The program hopes to instill certain life skills that, in the eyes of the supervisors who run the program, are essential to everyone whether they choose to go into the military or advance in a civilian career.

“JROTC actually stands for Junior Reserve Officer Training Corp,” said Dinkins. “What we do is help young people become citizens. So we teach a lot about citizenship, patriotism, leadership, with leadership being the foundation of what we do. We teach students how to be better leaders in the community, in the classroom, any kind of setting.”

}With the conclusion of the state competition, the JROTC will be competing again in the next academic school year. With the core of the team firmly built around youth, the program will hope to achieve even better results going into the fourth year of the program.