Friday is graduation day at the Coast Guard Training Academy at Yorktown. The campus lining the York River graduates more than 12,000 students a year.
Students march onto the main green until the quad is full, while families wait off to the side. This is their follow-on training after bootcamp. Though unlike the other services, members of the Coast Guard typically go straight into the fleet and may not go back to school for as long as two years after graduating from bootcamp. But they can’t move up in rank without finishing a course at one of the schools, like Yorktown.
Yorktown teaches the two of the Coast Guard’s largest job classifications, called rates. Boatswines Mates drive their boats and ships, while Machinist Technicians, which perform most of the basic repairs on board ships, said Capt. Scott Rae, commanding officer Training Academy Yorktown…