NJROTC makes history
Teams bring home 11 trophies from Bloomfield field meet
November 1, 2021
On October 23 the NJROTC came home with a historic 11 trophies after competing at the Bloomfield JROTC field meet.
“[Bloomfield] is just a really friendly competition and for us to get first and win all of those trophies within that one day is huge for us because it hasn’t happened in a very long time,” Senior Chelsie Glover, the Commanding Officer of NA’s unit, said.
ROTC has several teams including Academics: Color Guard, Drill, Drone, Physical Fitness (PT), and Rifle that compete in collective field meets, like the event at Bloomfield High School. Senior Connor Harris competed in the STEM event, which won first place.
“We had to build a device that could move water down a ramp without spilling any of the water,” said Harris.
Besides STEM, the unit took ten other awards including first place overall.
“Out of all of [the events] whoever has the highest amount of points wins,” said Glover. “Our school got 72 or 73 points and the second place team, which was Floyd Central, got about 68, 67 [points].”
“It feels great,” said Harris. “I didn’t think we were going to do it and I was pretty shocked. Especially when you compare [the win] to other years, we haven’t won very many things
and it was just pretty surprising. It feels really good to be part of a group that’s won.”
ROTC has attended the Bloomfield Field Event for years; however, the outcome of last weekend was the best yet. 
“The most trophies we had received at the Bloomfield competition prior to last weekend was eight total trophies,”
NJROTC Commander Micheal Cluver said. “I was incredibly proud of the effort of all the cadets and as the afternoon progressed I had a really good feeling things were going extremely well.”
The 11 trophies won boosted the morale among the unit and gave cadets a confidence boost regarding the future of the unit.
“There’s a lot of good freshman and first year cadets who are very motivated and now we actually have two instructors,” Harris said. “Last year we only had one and they’ve just been switching in and out. We’ve got two instructors who are probably going to stay for a while [and] we will do a lot better.”
In the past, the ROTC has been second to Floyd Central, according to Glover and this win could be a turning point.
“The cadets we have are very motivated and self-driven and I feel like if they keep that motivation in the next few years we will be a very strong unit,”Glover said. “I feel [even] this year as well, if we keep that motivation we had at Bloomfield [and] use our first place at that competition to motivate ourselves to be better at other competitions I think we would be a really good unit.”
Likewise, according to Commander Cluver, he believed that his cadets could achieve great things the whole time.
“I have very good confidence in all of our teams and program, once you are named the ‘Most Outstanding Unit’, you are now the standard bearer and other units bring their absolute best to compete with you,” said Commander Cluver. “It is the mark of a championship program to maintain high standards.”