The Navy is all about higher education — literally and figuratively.
The military branch landed an MH-60S Knighthawk chopper on the baseball field at Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Bayside on Friday in front of hundreds of bewildered and galvanized student cadets.
The demonstration — a part of Fleet Week — was a dream for the Queens high school’s Navy Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (NJROTC) four years in the making and marked the first time such an event had been done on city schools’ property in at least a decade.
“Last year, we went to Fleet Week. This year, they brought Fleet Week to us,” said Riddhi Chauhan, 16, a junior and next year’s cadet commanding officer.
The Post was afforded a bird’s eye view of the incredible ride, which kicked off at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, crossed over Central Park and through the length of Queens until coming to a spectacular rest at the high school.
Hundreds of students cheered on as the Naval officers from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit performed a fast rope demonstration — meaning they slid down the tether onto the baseball field as the chopper hovered a few dozen feet off the ground.
The energy remained high throughout the remainder of the event as the high school cadets met with the officers and caught a glimpse of what their future might look like.
“It’s huge. Just seeing everyone coming together for an event like this, it means the world to know that we’re all here for each other … We are one big family,” said Shanelle Kelly, 18, a senior looking forward to attending Norwich University, a military school in Vermont, in the fall.
Watching the helicopter demonstration and meeting the naval officers got Kelly “so excited” to achieve her dreams of working with the Marine Warfare Unit, something she has chosen because she knows it will be challenging.
Cardozo had been vehemently vying for the helicopter and fast rope demonstration for four years — almost as long as their NJROTC has been in existence.
The program boasts nearly 300 cadets — roughly 23% of its total student population — making it one of the fastest-growing in the country, according to Principal Meagan Colby, adding that not all of the cadets will go on to join the military, but most have aspirations of serving the country in some way.
For Chauhan — the incoming program’s boss — she only realized her dream of becoming a nuclear engineer for the Navy once she joined the NJROTC program last year.
She had joined the NJROTC because it looked like it offered a fun experience and would be a great resume builder, until it opened her eyes to what a career in the Navy could look like.
“Once you join it really changes your perspective. All of the branches are so unique and it’s so different of an experience from a 9-to-5 job,” she said.
Her predecessor, Bhaswi Singh, 17, is leaving to study pre-law at American University in the fall with future plans of joining the Navy after graduation.
“I do want to have that moment in my career where I serve my country and give back,” the Bellerose native said, adding that she is in Cardozo’s law program.
“Today is especially important to me. It gives respect and awareness about cadets do in the program, what a lot of our veterans do and how they serve the country, whether it be the Navy, Marines, Army … and there’s a helicopter, who doesn’t love that. And there’s music!”
For the servicemembers, the opportunity was just as valuable — and offered some of them the chance to dispel some of the misconceptions that the Navy is purely tied to sea operations.
“Their feedback has been really rewarding — to see how excited they are when we come in. I think we forget sometimes how important this is people? So it’s been a really good opportunity for me to be able to appreciate that,” said Erick Larson, one of the EOD servicemembers aboard the helicopter.
The division handles explosive threats and hazards, whether chemical, biological or nuclear and whether on land or underwater — a heavily science-based unit that was especially intriguing to students at Cardozo, which boasts a variety of science programs.
