NEWPORT—The NJROTC unit faced its stiffest competition ever at the Area 9 Championships due to the expansion of their competitive geographic area. With the addition of teams from the state of Texas the Area 9 Championship field of 10 teams contained five teams that had experience at the National Championship level.  

“Facing other units with a tradition of fielding strong competitive teams is something which makes our unit stronger. We may not have the winning tradition of many units just because we are a newer unit, but we are quite willing to take on these units to make us a stronger competitive team,” said Chief Raymond Rodriguez, the unit’s Naval Science Instructor.

“The first event of the day for us was the Unit Personnel Inspection,” exclaimed Megan Woody, the unit’s Operations Officer. “The UPI, as we call it, is the highest total points event in the competition. It pays off well to have a superior inspection result.  Today, we took third place in the event, and that was a good thing for our overall points total.”

For more details, please see the Tuesday edition of the Newport Plain Talk.