Central High School has a variety of different clubs, organizations, and extracurricular activities. Our JROTC program is a class students can choose to participate in and students from all grades are welcome to join. Within JROTC there is an extracurricular program called the Raiders team.

Raiders is an extracurricular activity where students learn teamwork skills and confidence while training for and participating in physically demanding competitions where they have a number of events ranging from equipment carry runs to obstacle courses. The Raiders team participated in one of their annual competitions at Ooltewah High School on November 4 against other Raiders teams in the region this year and pushed through leading them to first place after all their hard work. 

To prepare for the competition they do general exercises to work on their endurance and strength, they also practice the events that they know they’ll have to go through as they are informed about it ahead of time. As well as strength and endurance training, they also do muscle conditioning exercises to work specific muscle groups in order to be stronger and more prepared. 

The competitions they participate in are slightly different from each other based on the events that they do. They usually do obstacle courses involving walls to get over and other similar courses, while the other events can vary in equipment runs, tire carry events, and vehicle pulls. At the competitions there are always teams of ten whether that be ten boys, ten girls, or ten girls and boys on one team together.

Before every competition their team leader, Zane Ferrying, will shout “Raider team, are you ready?” and that will get them fired up for the obstacles to come. 

This win is sentimental for some of the members on the Raiders team. The Seniors that are leaving this year are very hopeful for the team going forward without them. 

“Being the best co-ed team in the county means a lot to us. We have many first time raiders so seeing them work hard and really show what they can do makes me proud. With this being my senior year I was super excited to leave the program with my first ever first place win,” explains Senior Jack Graham. 

The Raiders team is very proud of their first place win for Central and hope to accomplish many more wins like this one going forward.