Reigning champions in sports often talk of entering the following season with a bulls-eye on their backs. At this year’s Army ROTC Ranger Challenge in Fort Pickett, Virginia, on October 24–26, the East Carolina Army ROTC Pirate Battalion saw exactly what it looked like to have a bulls-eye on them.
Cadets in the Pirate Battalion plot map coordinates during the day land navigation event at the 2008 Ranger Challenge.
“Since we got first place last year, everyone was after us this year. There were actually schools that made t-shirts with the pirate skull and crossbones inside the crosshairs of a rifle scope,” said senior Matthew Kane, ECU ROTC squad leader. “It was ridiculous.”
For ECU’s cadets, any motivation they might have derived from such a display proved unnecessary. For five months they had trained for the Ranger Challenge, and they were confident in their ability to defend their 2007 championship.
The Ranger Challenge annually pits ROTC programs from North Carolina and Virginia colleges against one another in a two-day, nine-event competition that showcases cadets’ knowledge, technical ability, and physical stamina. At this year’s challenge, ECU competed against 20 other universities, including the Virginia Military Institute, and traditional ECU rivals North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
The Ranger Challenge events this year included land navigation exercises, rifle marksmanship, grenade assault course, squad tactical exercise, physical fitness test, and a 10-kilometer road march. It was a stressful weekend of events designed to push each 10-member squad to its limits.
The rope bridge event tests a squads communication, physical strength, and technical ability.
According to Kane, the teams that traditionally do the best in the Ranger Challenge are the ones that prepare before hand and don’t let the pressure of the competition get the best of them.
“A lot of schools, when they were waiting to do an event, they would be nervous,” he said. “We were always joking around a having a good time because we know we were prepared. We’ve trained for each event.”
As Team Captain, Kane was responsible for the training and preparation of the Pirate Battalion. That training began with a summer physical training program designed for cadets who wanted to be part of the Ranger Challenge team. The Pirate Battalion also held two field-training exercises this fall to practice the events they would compete in at this year’s challenge. While some of this year’s squad participated in previous competitions, other members were experiencing it for the first time. Events are often changed from year to year to keep the competition fresh and make it more challenging.
“The STX (squad tactical exercise) was something new this year,” said Kane. “It was something we had to research because there are guidelines to how it is done.”
The squad tactical exercise is the most complete test of a military unit in the Ranger Challenge competition. In the STX, each squad is thrust into a simulated combat scenario in which they must defend against a hypothetical superior enemy force. The squad must fall back to a secure area, identify its location, and call in artillery fire onto the enemy targets. Squad members must also set a defensive perimeter, and evaluate and care for two “casualties” along the way. Since the casualties are determined by officials on the spot, the event can be a difficult one to prepare for.
The 2008 Ranger Challenge division and overall champion Pirates pose with their hard-fought prize.
“We had four people deep at each position because we didn’t know who would become the two casualties,” said Kane. “So no matter who went down, someone else could step up and knew exactly what to do.”
It was that kind of preparation and confidence that garnered the Pirates a first-, second-, or third-place finish in six of the nine events, and granted them both the divisional and overall championships for the second consecutive year.
The members of the 2008 Ranger Challenge championship squad are seniors Matthew Kane, Eric Fitzgerald, Justin Lujan, and Steven Marrero; juniors Ted Brennis, Alex Connell, and Nathan Rimpf; sophomores Jeremy Miller, Lucas Weeks, and Aubry Hanson; and alternates Jeffery Shafer and Patricia Mikolajczak.
For more information about Army ROTC, click here.
11-21-08
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