Valley student fly high at aviation camp

“I’m going back next year,” said Garrett Burrows, a Valley High School student who spent five intense days at an aviation camp hosted by the U.S. Air Force this summer.

Burrows and his classmate Micah Williams traveled all the way to the Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama this summer to attend the first Aviation Challenge flight camp.

Walking around the center, the boys were fully immersed in the world with F16 and F18 fighter jets all around the center. Though it was a military camp, Williams said they focused on the Navy and Air Force.

“It just gave us the basic understanding, and I think that’ll kind of give us a leg up,” Williams said.

Both students are interested in pursuing a career in the military. Burrows hopes to enlist after high school and go to college after his service.

Burrows, a rising senior, has also spent the last several years on the Piedmont Motor Racing team at Inspire Academy where he and his classmates build, modify and race motor cars. Two years ago, his team won the first-place prize for their race.

Williams, a rising sophomore, said he plans to go to college after high school to help him advance his skills before he goes to the Air Force. His ultimate goal is to become a pilot. Williams is in a few leadership clubs including the Rambassadors.

Along with students from all around the country, Burrows and Williams got a first-hand glimpse into what it might be like to be in the Air Force.

“There was one kid from every 50 states at least,” Williams said. “There was a kid from New Jersey, a kid from New Mexico.”

All the participants were divided into teams and assigned roles. The teammates were each other’s constant companions throughout the week, Williams said. For every activity, mission or assignment that they did, they had to rely on each other.

“You’re doing all those activities and you kind of have to get along with them because that’s the only way you’re going to complete those activities,” Williams said. “And the whole thing was just a big bonding experience with the other people.”

“Especially because everyone was assigned a single role,” Burrows said.

Starting at 6 a.m., the boys’ days were jam-packed with lectures on the basics of flight theory and aircraft mechanics, midnight missions and flight simulators designed to be exactly like the real thing.

Some of their favorite activities were the field training exercises.

“It happened at 12 o’clock at night, and it was a mission that we got debriefed on beforehand. And we had to go out and do this mission at night,” Williams said. “Just like a training exercise. But it simulated a real-world problem in a real-world situation.”

“When we got captured the last night — because you could distract the guards so other people can come up and eliminate them — me and my team decided to turn on some music and do a conga line with the whole enemy team,” Burrows remembered. “We distracted them and we took the fort over.”

Even the living quarters, barracks with bunk beds, were designed to mimic a militaristic environment. Williams said they had to make sure their beds were made and everything was uniformly done.

All that was done was done together.

“What surprised me was how close I got with the people I was on the team with,” Burrows said.

“You have to trust your pilot,” Williams added, remembering the flight simulators.

Both boys agreed that the bond between the teams was instant. They said they have stayed in contact with their teams even now.

The program is sponsored by the Alabama legislature. House Representative Debbie Wood sponsored the camp using education funds to bring the opportunity to students like Burrows and Williams.

“It was a really good opportunity for me and Garrett, and I’m just grateful we got to go,” Williams said.

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