- November 22, 2024
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Samantha Rees, a junior at Lakewood Ranch High School, spent every night before a junior ROTC orienteering competition preparing herself.
She would have a carb-heavy meal and would spend time studying maps from previous years. She used Google Earth to study the terrain.
She runs at least twice per week and is always leading the team’s practices.
Her hard work paid off as she finished the orienteering season ranked No. 1 in the state for the females competing at the advanced level.
Throughout the season, William Cassidy, a JROTC instructor at Lakewood Ranch High, said Rees placed first in every competition except one, where she came in second.
Rees wasn’t the only one to see success at the Florida 2022 JROTC Orienteering State Championship April 9 at Kelly Park in Apopka. The orienteering program’s yellow team, which is for beginners, placed first overall, and the program’s orange team, which is for intermediate, and the green team, which is for advanced, each placed second overall.
Lakewood Ranch's orienteering program as a whole ranked third overall in the state.
Although cadets compete in team divisions, orienteering also is an individual competition. Each cadet has to pull their weight and improve throughout the season in order for the team to achieve success.
Two Lakewood Ranch boys and three girls ranked in the top 10 of their advanced divisions.
Rees wasn’t able to participate in last year’s state championship because she was quarantined with COVID-19, making her first place win in the female advanced competition at this year’s state championship even better.
“I have put so much time and effort into this team because I also run all of the practices, and at meets, I’m in charge of making sure everyone’s where they need to be,” Rees said. “To even just be there and then to do as well as I did, it’s exciting to see that hard work pay off.”
The season doesn’t come without its ups and downs. Rees and junior Muda Osman said cadets can tell when they’re having an off day.
For example, at a competition earlier in the season, Osman had the wrong map for the first 10 minutes of the competition. After he realized he had the wrong course, he went back to the start to get the right map.
“I knew I couldn’t win because I already lost 10 minutes, but I still did my best,” Osman said. “I didn’t do as bad as I thought. I was a little annoyed because it messed up my whole time.”
Cassidy said seeing the orienteering team’s continued success reaffirms the JROTC program’s decision to give up a drill team to start an orienteering team seven years ago. Lakewood Ranch's orienteering team is the only team within the School District of Manatee County.
“It was a gamble for us when we did it,” Cassidy said. “In hindsight, I’m glad we did. We won’t look back. We’ll never change back to what we were doing. The kids love it. That’s the bottom line. If you get something the kids like doing, as long as it’s working, don’t mess with it.”
With the state championship over, students are looking to the future.
Rees wants to continue using an app, iOrienteering, to help develop mock courses around the school’s campus to assist with training cadets, but she also wants to grow the program.
“(I’m looking forward) to all the new kids,” Rees said. “I love teaching this. Hopefully I can do it as a job one day. Because I love the sport, I want other people to love the sport as well. I want to get as many people as I can get.”
Osman is ready to pass his knowledge down to the new cadets in the program and give them advice on how to go through the course as fast as possible. He said what cadets need to learn most is how to not get nervous on the course.
“You have to be calm,” Osman said. “On the course, slow is fast in orienteering, so you have to take your time going through each point, thinking about where you are constantly and how you’re going to get to the next point the fastest way possible without missing it.”
Of course, Rees and Osman hope they can win a third state championship.
