For many students, high school is a time of change, growth, and finding where they belong. At Miami High, the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) program provides more than just leadership training—it creates lifelong friendships that evolve into something deeper: family.
Strangers to Classmates
When senior Keily Martinez, junior Joan Rugama, junior Deglys Lopez, senior Reineri Henriquez, and senior Clever Villanueva joined JROTC, they had little in common. They were just five students from different backgrounds. Some joined for leadership experience, others for discipline, and a few simply because they were curious. None of them expected to form a bond that would feel like family.
“At first, we were just names on a roster,” Keily, now a senior and Command Sargent major, states. “We barely knew each other, but JROTC forces you to rely on your team. That’s when everything changed.” After hours of practice, drills, and supporting each other through competitions, they have created an inseparable bond. The program was a home away from home.
That transformation didn’t happen overnight. It took time. Long days of uniform inspections, late-night study sessions for the JPA (unit inspection), and the struggle of pushing through tedious physical training allowed the students to get closer. Each obstacle they faced brought them closer together. Reineri Henriquez says that although at times certain things in his personal life made him feel down, having the support of his friends brought him back due to their encouragement.
Overcoming Challenges Together
Throughout the years in the program, their friendship strengthened through shared struggles. “There were days when we wanted to quit,” says Clever. “But when you have people who push you, a support system who won’t let you give up, you keep going. That’s what family does.”
Clever remembers that when he struggled with grades and considered giving up. Instead of his friends letting him fail, they rallied around him. “They helped me study, kept me accountable, and reminded me why I joined. To this day I believe that the reason I was ever able to get my stuff together to be eligible to go to states was because of the group,” he says. “They didn’t have to do that, but they did—because we weren’t just teammates or people who had classes together anymore. We were family.”
More Than a Uniform
While JROTC instills discipline and leadership, it also gives students something much bigger, something of more significance, a place to feel understood. Through personal struggles, academic stress, and even family issues, they lean on each other.
For Keily, JROTC transformed her high school experience. “I never really felt like I belonged anywhere before JROTC,” she says. “But this program took me in. They made me feel valued, like I had a place—at school of all places.”
School was never her favorite thing. It was a chore, something she had to do to get her diploma and graduate. That is how she thought of it her freshman year before she joined the program.
Through the long bus rides to competitions, community service events, camp, and celebrating victories together, she realized how much she truly enjoyed being at school, and it was not because of school, but the people who now surround her. They made her try things she never thought she would and is a much better person because of it. The other students became a support system for one another, both in and out of the class. It is something you cannot find elsewhere.
A Family That’s Chosen
JROTC taught me that brotherhood and sisterhood aren’t just about friendship; it’s about accountability, trust, and an unbreakable sense of loyalty. Whether it was when we were perfecting drill routines before competitions or the practices before the JPA unit inspection, we always had each other’s backs, not only to allow for our success but the success of the program as a whole.
Even outside of the program, the bond created there carried over into everyday life. We celebrated each other’s victories, supported each other through personal struggles, and built relationships that we know will last well beyond high school. JROTC is not just a program—it is a family that has not only shaped me into the person I am today but countless others.
Now, as we are preparing to graduate, we know that our friendship will not end the moment we walk off that stage. Some of us will pursue military careers, while others will head to college.
Deglys Lopez states, “One thing that I am certain of is that even though none of us even plan to stay in the same city much less the same state, these people are my family, the one I chose.”
Just as Deglys stated, Joan said, “We might not be on the same path, but we’ll always have each other’s backs. JROTC gave us the discipline and leadership skills we need for life, but more importantly, it gave me a family. The friends I have made will be my future kids’ uncles and aunts.”
For many JROTC cadets, the program is more than just preparation for the future—it’s the foundation of unbreakable bonds. The program’s goal is to motivate young people to be better citizens. Little did the people who established the JROTC program in 1916 expect students to create the bonds they have. And for Keily, Joan, Deglys, Clever, and Reineri, those bonds will last a lifetime.
