Commander's Page

I told you guys this year would go by fast.  Here we are in February and getting ready to “laissez les bon temps rouler”!!  The year is almost over.  Thanks to everyone for the hard work and all of the accomplishments since I last added words to this page.  We pulled off a highly successful “Sports Day” and the schools that participated left with high marks for the event and promised that they would be back next year.  Our participation ensured that the “Mane Event” was a success and we ended up with extra $$$ in our pocket.  Our Veterans Day presentation was pretty good but I think we can do better with it next year but we need to START NOW.  Congratulations go out to Cadet Ensign Robert Crawford and the great work that he did with the Cyber Patriots. They managed to make it through the second round and came very close to the third and final round which would have meant a trip to Orlando. Next year the Cyber patriots will march all the way to Orlando.   ALL of the team members deserve congratulations for coming together to compete at Tulane.  That drill meet showed that we need to work on armed and unarmed drill.  Color guard and PT made respectable showings and I was pleased with their efforts.  One of the things that we have got to improve on is PERSONNEL INSPECTION!!  It’s not rocket science!  Clean pressed uniform (I even volunteered to pay for the dry cleaning), haircut, shave, shoes shined, check your socks.  If you added up the time that it takes to get ready for a personnel inspection, it certainly takes less than an hour and you can look great.  There’s NO EXCUSE for not finishing in the top three schools in personnel inspection and we ended up 8th out of 13 schools and that’s UNSAT.  Everyone needs to concentrate on our drill meet in March and be ready to win.   The orienteering trip to Camp McDowell was a rousing success.  Our green team finished in 1st place and we had Gage Gottschalk pick up a 1st  and Billy Becker a 3rd  individual on the green course.  Two of our parents (Mr Morales and Ms Desroches) ran the orange course and finished quite well.  We also accomplished a lot of valuable training for everyone that attended Camp McDowell; it’s always a lot of fun.  Annual Inspection got everyone’s energy level up.  Captain Ross and his crew from Southern University gave us a very close look and my impression was that he liked what he saw except for our low numbers.  We have to work on our enrollment and that’s where our cadet’s participation is critical.  We made an awesome trip to the Civilian Marksmanship Program’s range in Anniston, AL.  The team finished in the middle of about 20 teams.  Congratulations to Christian Paille for guiding the marksmanship team through a great event.  Thanks to everyone that contributed to the success of the Military Ball.   Everyone that attended enjoyed the evening and had a great time.  Next year I think we need to look into decorating the place a little bit more.  If there are some creative minds (I know there is) please start thinking about what you might want to do to dress up an already beautiful room at Vintage Court.   I visited 5th Ward today to talk to the 8th graders about our NJROTC program.  Jordan LeBlanc and Sarah Sharp went with me and did a great job of recruiting for CHS.   I talked to a bunch of motivated future cadets that were eager to see us next year.  Next week we will be visiting our feeder schools to talk to our incoming freshmen and it’s critical that we convince them that NJROTC is the BEST way to earn PE and Health credits.    While I’m thinking about it, I want to congratulate Eric Kyathfield for his early selection for an NROTC scholarship to the University of South Florida.  USF is one of the top 10 research universities in the United States and has one of the best ROTC programs in the United States.   Eric’s interest is in aviation and it would be great to travel to a naval air station for a “winging” ceremony some day.  Next week-end the orienteering team travels to Brookesville, Florida to compete in the National Invitational Orienteering Championships.  Originally this competition was scheduled to be in California and it would have been cost prohibitive for us to attend but Florida is within our range and we did qualify at Oak Mountain so we’re going to go for it.  That’s about it for now.  I was kind of kidding about the year being over but believe me, when we come back from Mardi Gras, third nine week exams will be staring us in the face and right after that we are going to try and attend a “score” orienteering event at West Feliciana.  Then it’s Chef Soiree and our drill meet.   You guys do a great job so carry on and let’s finish this year out in style.  LCDR Johnson