The students part of the ROTC program work hard to train for the navy and military, but there are also people working behind the scenes and supporting the program by hosting events and fundraisers to keep the program going and arrange activities for the cadets. 

The Anchor Club, which is the booster club for ROTC, debuted in 2022 and has been supporting the funding for the cadets since. 

“Major Billings and the parents of the ROTC cadets came together and that’s how the booster club was made,” physical training team leader Kimberley Sullivan said. “They had a meeting and set up their positions and now they are our fundraising program.” 

Though there have been challenges with organizing and starting the club, Major Billings, the teacher of the ROTC program, says that the parents have been immensely helpful throughout the process of organizing the booster club.  

“There’s always a risk of parents trying to take control of a lot of programs as well so I was conscious of that,” Billings said. “But I knew I had a very good supportive group of parents. They had talked to me about it a little bit and ultimately around this time last year we started talking a little more intently about what we need to do to put a booster club. So, in May of last year, 2022, we established our very first booster club.”

Along with Major Billings, The Anchor Club is organized by the parents of the students in the ROTC program, they raise money for the program through fundraisers, events, and more.   

“So, it’s not parents coming out of pocket so they help with fundraisers as well. Some of my fellow instructors have a good idea of fundraising,” said Billings. “So I kind of picked their brains about that but the parents have a lot as well, some that worked for other organizations within Lebanon Trail and some that were new to the school. So we’ve done some of those fundraisers as well which help pay for [lunches, banquets, field trips, and more].” 

The cadets also train to participate in district and state competitions, which have to do with activities such as physical training and drill team marching competitions.

“We were in Corpus Christi in February and we competed against 21 other teams and we ended up getting 14th in unarmed drill and 15th in armed drill out of those 21 teams, so there’s still room for improvement,” said Billings. “Another team we compete in interscholastically is the color guard. If you attended a football game, either a high school game or professional game, the folks that bring out the national flag before the game for the national anthem. We have a color guard very military like, but obviously it’s high schoolers that do it and they have been very active this year in the frisco area. We’ve done around 17 color guard functions this year here. So we compete that during a competition as well. We got 11th place out of 21 teams down in Corpus Christi with our color guard. ”

ROTC cadet Kasey Dubester says participating in these activities is enjoyable and that she has a good time at the competitions.

“We do physical training competitions as well,” ROTC cadet Kasey Dubester said.”That’s basically where we just go to a different school and we participate in running events and lifting events, there’s tug of war most of the time. So it’s just this fun bonding thing that we do.” 

Along with the military-like marching and physical training competitions with other schools in the district, Lebanon Trail’s JROTC also has an academic team participating in competitions answering SAT and Navy based questions. 

“We also have an academic team and they probably work the hardest of any of our teams. We got third place down in Corpus Christi out of the 21 teams in our academic teams,” said Billings. “We have naval science one, two, three and four in the curriculum. A lot of these students are first and second year cadets so they have to look forward to the knowledge questions, so SAT type common knowledge questions, some math, some english. But being a young program, a lot of my cadets are freshman, sophomores and juniors, so they might not score as highly on an SAT or ACT type of test. But so far they’ve worked [very hard] and I can see in the future, being one of our strongest areas here at Lebanon Trail.”

Overall, Major Billings says he’s proud of the work that the cadets put into the program and that the booster club has been a great asset to enhancing the program, and looks forward to another year with the club. 

“There are some good and bad stories about certain other booster clubs, but the anchor club has been phenomenal.” Billings said. 

For more information you can go to the Anchor Club’s official website at https://www.lthsanchorclub.com/ .