I spent a combined three weeks over the span of three years at a JROTC summer camp, JROTC Cadet Leadership Challenge, better known as JCLC. I spent two out of the three years yelling at high school students who were younger than me, my age, and older than me, a very strange concept when I think of it now. JCLC emerges its selected handful of cadets from different Army JROTC high school programs to come together for a five day summer camp in Lake Wales, FL at Camp Flaming Arrow. The camp takes its cadets through challenges such as, rappelling, high and low COPES, land navigation, and my all time favorite station, army water survival training (AWST).
I was a freshman in high school when I was selected to attend the camp as a cadet. To this day, it’s one of the best experiences I’ve had, not only did it allow me to test the waters in my leadership styles, but meet people I’m still friends with til this day. It’s been over four years since I first went to camp and I can happily say that I still have the occasional meet ups with some of the friends I made with at this camp. This summer, I had breakfast with a dear friend, Brent Brown, who is currently a Yearling at the United States Military Academy at West Point and I often FaceTime him to run my mouth off about everything under the sun. I met Brent during the top female and male boards of the camp, and we have stayed close friends since first meeting and I am incredibly thankful for him as he keeps me accountable for my actions and goals while being one of my best motivators. I currently go to the same university as my battle buddy from camp,
Ariana Richards.
Ariana and I have had thanksgiving dinner together with our families, celebrated her graduation from Basic Training and high school, and hung out a couple days ago (I got my car towed from her apartment complex last Wednesday when I stopped by to hangout with her for 45 minutes lol). I went over to my friend Danny’s apartment this summer, where my dog, Jeff, peed on his carpet, and I still forced him to watch “Dear John”, which I would argue he enjoyed (I’m the ideal guest). And I’ve watched our other friend in our five-day long friend group, Elijah, become a marine. I nicknamed Elijah “Buzz” four years ago and we made our own little handshake that requires us to stick out of pinky fingers and touch them while making a buzzing noise. I have seen Elijah randomly a couple times in the past four years and we have done this greeting every single time without fail.
This camp is responsible for the amount of love and commitment I invested in my JROTC program in high school which led to the same respect and love I have for the Army as I do now in ROTC. Sometimes I think about all the friends I still have from JCLC and it excites me for the career I will start in the army. Imagine all the people I have yet to meet and the people I have met because of these military organizations, and all of that excitement came to life because I agreed to sleep on a cot in the middle of nowhere Florida at 14. While the people I met at this camp are what makes this camp rank so highly in my book, the experience alone was challenging and confronts fears that you may, or may not, know you had at a young age.
I loved the company I was apart of! My mom had gone the year before I came to high school at the request of the ex JROTC SAI to help chaperone as she was about to retire from the Army. The first year I went to JCLC was the first year my mom was in retirement and she was asked again to chaperone. We both agreed to pretend that we weren’t related so no favoritism was shown and she kept it up like a boss. My mom is such a funny woman, but I would never cross her in any lifetime. You see, I was used to seeing my mom be the LTC she used to be, but these poor kids in my company had another thing coming. My mom would give all the girls four minutes to shower everyday, did harsh tent inspections, and, by no means, took any high schooler's attitude. On the last day if camp, one group of girls left their tent a MESS and gave my mom a terrible attitude. Long story short, the entire camp had heard the scolding my mom gave these girls. GO GLENDA! Her acting in this manner brought our company together. We bonded on how miserable her conditions were, but appreciated her standing up for us as she somehow got our company to always eat first during chow and kept us in line (we also always had the cleanest camp site because of her). After the closing ceremony, I told everyone she was my mom and it was one of the funniest reactions id gotten up until that moment.
I was lucky enough to have mentor in (Ret.) LTC Eric J. Deal, my high school JROTC SAI. My sophomore year of high school, Colonel Deal asked me to me an instructor for the JCLC station he was in charge of, AWST. This is one of the biggest honors I have ever been presented with just because of how cool I felt as an instructor at the time. Army Water Survival Training is, in my opinion, the most challenging station during the whole camp. Cadets spend hours at a time at a station, and the first hour of AWST is a continuous smoke sesh, led my Colonel Deal himself.
The first hour challenges your physical abilities, mental toughness, unity as a company, and motivation you have in yourself and team. AWST has a notorious bell that can be rung by any cadet who decides to quit during the workout, and it is HIGHLY encouraged by the instructors for cadets to quit. We offer them cold gatorade, a honeybun, and a way out of the beating sun. At the lowest level, AWST finds those of the sound mind and body that can perform under an extreme amount of stress and chaos while still being able to support your battle buddies around you. After completing the smoke sesh, the company is split into three different groups to do our three rotations.
The three rotations included water survival, kayaking, and rubber boat racing. During water survival, cadets were taught how to turn their ACU bottoms into a floatation device, a lot harder said than done; cadets are thrown into the lake and instructed to make their flotation device without any help from the starting position of wearing the pants. My freshman year, one guy in our group had lost his swimming trunks while taking off his ACU bottoms and by the end of the exercise, he only had his boxers on and had to get out of the lake and wear soaking wet ACU bottoms for the rest of AWST…we ended up finding his swim trunks three years later. Kayaking was self explanatory, cadets picked a battle buddy and were taught how to kayak and went through a lengthy kayaking trail for them to enjoy. My first year, Arianna and I were in the same kayak when a lightning warning when off, the wind had been picking up, and it pushed us into lily pads that we couldn't get out of. And, saving the best for last, rubber boat racing. I was an instructor for this station each year I was an instructor and I took it SERIOUSLY.
I was determined to win each boat race we had and I had a blast with all the teams I had the privilege of teaching. Before the actual boat race began for each session, instructors gave a class on boat terminology, how to properly paddle, how to capsize a boat, how to recover the boat, and mediated as the groups chose their boat captain and came up with a game plan and practiced for the boat race. Now this boat race is humbling and requires every person’s effort to complete. The boat race made all the boat crews carry a rubber boat from the sand to the water, paddle to a buoy, go around it, capsize their boats, recover it, get everyone back on, then paddle back to land. This was always funny to watch and got all three of the teams to compete against each other and have fun.
Being an instructor required early days, and no one was off limits when it came to Colonel Deal and his phone camera. He was ready to take a picture of you when you looked your worst just for it to end up on the instagram and facebook page, I was a very popular person to photograph as I constantly looked annoyed and tired. My first year as an instructor, Colonel Deal ordered all the instructors pizza and went to the store off camp grounds to get us snacks.
This man came back with so many snacks, ranging from fruit snacks, to gatorades, to honeybuns, to chips, it was safe to say that if the zombie apocalypse ever broke out while we were in camp, we would’ve been good. My first wake up as an instructor, Colonel Deal came to the large room me and the other female instructor were staying and woke me up, or at least tried to. When he shook me awake, I told him i'd get ready, and, immediately as he turned away and was almost out the door, I laid back down in my cot. We would all go to breakfast chow together and everyone knew not to talk to me in the morning because I was incredibly grumpy (kudos to the group of instructors that had to deal with that). After breakfast, we would head to the beach of the camp where AWST was and we would rake the sand for an hour while all the cadets got ready and ate breakfast (Colonel Deal did NOT tell any of the high school instructors about raking the sand, and it's a good thing he didn’t because it was a humbling task to do at 0530). My second year of being an instructor, I told everyone that Colonel Deal was my dad, and like the champ he is, he went along with it and would answer every time I would call him “dad”.
I keep this camp closely to my heart and think about it all the time. Each year I went to JCLC had it’s own defining moments and experiences that will last for many years. I am grateful for all the opportunities I was given with this camp and it gave me a sense of confidence that I hadn’t had before. Thank you to all the instructors I met during this camp, friends I made, and, especially, Colonel Deal for trusting me with a large group of 14-17 years old...trusting that I wouldn’t let them drown.
with all my love,
♡steff
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