Top team
University of Delaware Army ROTC cadets win regional Ranger Challenge
1:08 p.m., Nov. 11, 2015--A team of 12 cadets from the University of Delaware’s Army ROTC program has won the highly competitive Ranger Challenge regional event, topping 41 other teams from the Mid-Atlantic area’s 4th Brigade in contests of physical, tactical and technical skills.
With the win, which is UD’s first, the team was awarded the Commander’s Cup and an invitation to compete this spring in the Sandhurst International Military Skills Competition at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The daylong 4th Brigade competition was held in October at Fort Pickett, Virginia.
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The team of nine men and three women was selected at the start of fall semester from members of UD’s Army ROTC program who volunteered for the competition. Lt. Col. Kenneth Scerbo, professor and chairperson of military science, said a decision was made to dedicate more training time than in previous years, allowing participating cadets to focus their extracurricular time on preparing for the Ranger Challenge.
The team members spent two hours each morning, five days a week, training for the competition, with occasional afternoon and weekend work added on.
“I was a little reluctant at first about letting them make this their priority,” Scerbo said. “But it paid off. You can look at this like participating in a varsity sport, and we’ve won our conference.”
Capt. Matthew Britnell, assistant professor of military science, who oversaw the team, said the outcome at Fort Pickett surpassed even his initial optimism.
“Last year we placed 26th, and I knew we’d do better this year, but I was hoping for a top-five or even a top-10 finish,” he said. When the results were tabulated at the end of the competition, the announcement was made for third place (Appalachian State), then second (Johns Hopkins). Not hearing UD’s name, Britnell figured his team had finished fourth or fifth.
“When they called our name for first place, I was stunned,” he said. “It was a great moment.”
The cadets were less surprised with the results because of how dedicated and cohesive the team was throughout its training, said Micah Petersen, a junior from Houston, Texas, with majors in international relations and Chinese studies. Like most of the other UD participants, he took part in a previous year’s Ranger Challenge, and he said this year felt different.
“Our goal was to win, and we had a huge buy-in from everyone to reach that goal,” he said. “We trained really well, and I think we proved that you don’t need to have individual stars on your team. If everybody works hard and sacrifices, you succeed.”
For Ellie Blake, a junior health behavior science major from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this year was her third in the competition. The training went so well and the group enjoyed working together so much, she said, that the day of the competition wasn’t overly stressful.
“We were so well prepared that this full day didn’t even seem that exhausting,” Blake said. “We were really working hard, but we were having fun too.”
Junior Mark Couchman, a criminal justice major from Lewes, Delaware, who attended Delaware State University for two years before coming to UD, said he was eager to compete.
“It’s time consuming, but the experience and the teamwork are really worth it to me,” he said. “I love the military lifestyle, and being part of the Ranger Challenge seemed to represent everything I like about it.”
The cadets will take a short break before beginning training for Sandhurst, which will include competitors from around the world. Their work will begin again in earnest at the end of Winter Session.
“At Sandhurst, we won’t just be representing little Delaware, we’ll be representing the whole East Coast,” Petersen said. “It’s hard to convey to civilians how big a deal this is.”
More about the team and UD Army ROTC
The cadets on the winning team, in addition to Petersen, Blake and Couchman, were squad leader David Dinerman, Colby Garbutt, Ian Milburn, Lindsey Baryluk, Eriq Gloria, Todd Thorp, Angel Ortiz, Alessandro Chiodo and Kristin Alwell.
The Ranger Challenge included multiple events in three categories, assessing a team’s physical, tactical and technical skills. Nine cadets, at least one of them a woman, were required to participate in each event. Events included a road march, obstacle course, firing range, weapons assembly and disassembly, boat movement and building a one-rope bridge.
ROTC, the Reserve Officers Training Corps, is the largest officer-producing program for the U.S. military. At UD, the Army program is part of the College of Arts and Sciences but is open to any student in any major. It is an elective that combines courses in leadership, military science and practical exercises with a regular academic course load.
The University’s Army ROTC program currently has 112 cadets who are students at UD or at its partnership schools: Delaware State, Salisbury and Lincoln universities; Wesley College; and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
Article by Ann Manser
Photo courtesy of UD Army ROTC