Lakewood Ranch athletes wear purple to honor murdered teammate at County Raider Meet.
By
Amelia Hanks
| 8:20 a.m. October 24, 2018
East County
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The Lakewood Ranch High Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps members didn't wear their customary forest green to the County Raider Meet at Braden River on Oct. 20.Â
They wore purple.
They were honoring sophomore Andrea Barberena-Rojas, a member of the JROTC program at Lakewood Ranch who was killed Sept. 23 in a double murder suicide at her Central Park home. She was shot by her stepfather, James Bennett, who also killed her mother, Silvana Bennett, before killing himself,
Her teammates remembered Barberena-Rojas loved the color purple.
They also said she loved the Raider competition.Â
"Abby was a beast at this stuff," said freshman Julia Kroos-Roberts of Raider competition. "We wanted to compete and make her proud. She was just such a strong team player."
Abby was Barberena-Rojas' middle name, which she went by at school.
All the Manatee County high school programs that had Raider programs competed Oct. 20. The event began with a 5K, and then the teams went different directions to compete in skills competitions. The challenges included making a rope bridge to climb over, carrying a weighted gurney, pushing a tire and negotiating an obstacle course. Each event is timed.
All the schools had boys, girls and mixed teams.Â
Braden River High School, the defending state champion, took the title.Â
Freshman Hunter Miller from Braden River High School's JROTC men's team races across the finish line with his team.
Junior Reed Blankinship from Braden River, has to tie his knot exactly correct before his team pulls him across the rope bridge so he doesn't get a penalty, which can be a little nerve-wracking.
One of the captains of the Braden River team, senior Gina Pressimone, says she loves the rope bridge challenge because every team member has a job in order to correctly haul themselves between trees without touching the ground.
Sophomore Alexis Dimond flies through the challenge, as do the rest of her teammates. Braden River completes the rope bridge in one minute and 20 seconds.
The shirts the Lakewood Ranch JROTC wears are in honor of Abby Rojas, killed on Sept. 23.
Sophomore Joseph Coyners and freshman Jacob Jackson from Braden River have to crawl under an obstacle at the end of their one mile run with their packs, and they could barely get their names out at the end of the race.
In order to pull the litter through the obstacle, senior Devon Avante, sophomore Hunter Miller and freshman Todd Jack have to work together to pull the litter through so the rest of the team can climb through the obstacle.
Lakewood Ranch's Sofia Uribe, Nadiya Simplson, Reagan Gross, Elisa West, and D'nasha Washington have to push a tire as fast as they can approximately 100 yards.
The entire Lakewood Ranch mixed team has to work together to carry a weighted gurney to simulate a body being carried for one mile. The weight of the gurney is 100 pounds.
Sophomore Hannah Ramsden from Lakewood Ranch has to carry a backpack one mile, and the backpack weighs about 30 pounds to simulate the weight of a pack you would have to carry when you're active duty.
