Saturday morning dawned drizzly and overcast, but this didn’t stop Junior ROTC cadets from testing their endurance, knowledge, and skill at the Raiders meet at East Surry High School.

East Surry fell short of winning overall, coming in third and fifth with its two teams. The other Surry County schools in the meet, Surry Central and North Surry, placed seventh and ninth respectively. East Rowan High School team A came in first.

Nine teams competed in the meet: Surry Central High School, two teams from East Surry High School, North Surry High School, Glenn High School, Bassett High School from Virginia, two teams from East Rowan High School, and Ashe County High School. There were nearly 100 participants, with each team consisting of eight members and an alternate.

The event began at 6:30 a.m. with a physical fitness test, where cadets competed to see who could do the most push-ups and sit-ups in a minute then complete a 1-mile run. The individual times were averaged for the team score.

The teams then rotated between different stations located across the East Surry campus. At the rope bridge event, the team has to build a rope bridge for each team member to get across. At the first aid and litter carry station, teams demonstrated their knowledge of how to fix a bleeding wound and fracture, tend for shock, and carry a litter.

At the land navigation event, teams were timed on finding different points in the woods with a compass. The 5K event required a whole team to run five kilometers (3.2 miles) together.

The last event was the commander’s event, a mystery event which none of the teams knew about until they got there. At East Surry, the commander’s event involved simulating jumping out of a helicopter.

Some alumni of the JROTC program at East Surry came back to grade the cadets. Jayson Crosby is a 2007 graduate of East Surry, where he was the battalion commander of the JROTC. On Saturday he came back to help judge the first aid and litter carry event.

“It’s good to come back and assist. It was something I really enjoyed when I was in high school. It added structure, allowed me to help the community,” said Crosby.

High schools with JROTC programs can put together Raider teams to compete against other schools. As Maj. Roy Ferguson described it, this “adventure training team” is like the “varsity sport” of JROTC. At East Surry, the Raiders members train after school a few days each week.

Tim Bodford, an athletic trainer at East Surry, said, “It’s pretty incredible, the competition, the teamwork.”

The East Surry Raiders host one meet per semester. Ferguson said they usually compete in two meets per semester. The next meet East Surry will attend is at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

East Surry is part of the fourth brigade, which primarily consists of JROTC Raider teams from North Carolina. East Surry generally has 10 to 12 cadets in the Raider program out of the 60 cadets that participate in the program every semester.

First Sgt. Ron Montgomery coaches the team, and Ferguson is the JROTC senior instructor at East Surry.

“The mission is to motivate people to be better citizens. It’s not to put them in the military or join the army,” said Ferguson.

He listed physical training, better morale, and a spirit of camaraderie as benefits of the program. Ferguson said, “A lot of benefit comes out of it.”

At the East Surry meet, the placement of the teams was determined by adding up the points they were awarded for their placement in each separate event. Here is how the teams placed overall:

1. East Rowan team A, 540 points. 2. Ashe, 420. 3. East Surry team A, 420. 4. Bassett, 390. 5. East Surry team B, 370. 6. Glenn, 340. 7. Surry Central, 300. 8. East Rowan team B, 280. 9. North Surry, 180.

Contact Meghann Evans at mevans@mtairynews.com or 719-1952.