Elbert County is home to another state championship team as the Elbert County Comprehensive High School mixed raider team secured a first place overall finish at the state meet in Griffin Oct. 29.
“[The drill team] won the state championship last season so to win the championship in back-to-back seasons feels pretty good,” Raider Coach Sgt. Dan Ulrich said. “This is Sgt. Cadd’s team and he couldn’t be here due to some family health problems, but the team made a promise to him at the beginning of the year that they were going to do their best to bring home a ring for him and they did just that.”
The state meet saw Elbert’s raiders compete in five different events during an all-day meet against 54 other schools from Tier 2, Elbert’s classification based on enrollment within the JROTC program.
The raiders started the meet with a first place finish in the 5k run where the mixed team finished in 23 minutes.
After the run, the team competed in the tire flip, finishing first with a time of 1:54, and Cross Country Rescue, where they also finished in first with a time of 8:20.
Next for the mixed team was the kettlebell relay race where the Raiders finished in third and posted a time of 4:46.
After the relay race, Elbert closed the championship-winning performance with a second place finish in the rope bridge after posting a time of 1:45.
“Before 10 a.m. it was pretty cold,” Ulrich said. “[Raider meets are] based on athleticism, but every event requires team effort and they all have to know what each other are going to do. So in the cold and doing something physically demanding they have to be thinking about themselves and each other so it’s quite the feat to overcome.”
The state champion mixed raider team features Kalebb Ingle, Heidi Navarro, Justin Brown, Phillip Bolden, Eva Garcia-Laguna, Linda-Garcia Laguna, Tyson Haigood, Jamaze Hall, Josiah Harkins, Isabella Harpold, Wyatt Stelter, Selenda Valdivia and Aiden Clark.
“When you show up, you have to meet the army standard which is haircuts, wearing the uniform correctly, not having facial piercings or other things you’re not allowed to have in uniform and a lot of those other teams were getting points reduced for uniform infractions,” Ulrich said. “I love coming to this tiny little town and taking a team out of a building that was built in 1971 to a multi-million dollar school and just crushing them because we’re doing the standard and doing what’s right. I love it.”
After the state championship meet, the Raiders are scheduled to travel to Molina for the national championship event Nov. 5 through Nov. 6.