Members of Army ROTC are training for the upcoming Ranger Challenge, taking place Oct. 24 to 26.
The Ranger Challenge is like a varsity sport within ROTC, according to Capt. Patrick Preston, in which students compete against other schools’ ROTC members in various events.
One of the group’s recent training sessions took place last Friday.
Mitchell Robinson, a senior in business, was in charge of a portion of last week’s exercise.
The cadets “did pretty good, despite it being cold, wet and miserable outside,” Robinson said.
Robinson was in charge of the land navigation portion of the training, in which students locate points with a compass and map.
“Most cadets found three out of the four navigation points that they were supposed to find,” Robinson said.
There were two groups of competitors, one which will participate in the Ranger Challenge, and those that will not participate, according to Robinson.
Not all the cadets utilized the training session equally, Robinson said, and those cadets that will be taking part in the competition faced different challenges.
The cadets not participating in the Challenge had two three-hour sessions of land navigation, he said.
One session took place during the day, with another at night.
During the day session most cadets found about three or four of the five navigational points assigned to them, Robinson said.
Scott Kincaid, a senior in political science, was in charge of the Challenge training.
He said that the cadets not training for the Challenge impressed him because most cadets identified more locations than expected, he said.
The cadets that will be participating in the Challenge faced much tighter time constraints to find their navigation points, Kincaid said.
They had 75 minutes and found at least four of the five points given to them.
The cadets that won’t be participating this weekend are training to take their LDAT, or Leadership Developement and Assesment Test, at the end of the spring semester.
These training sessions also have a practical purpose, according to Robinson.
“As an officer, you need to know maps and you cant always rely on a GPS for guidance,” he said.
Officers must be able to read maps and use a compass because in combat, they may not be able to describe their locations to others, Robinson said.
“Everything you do in the field requires that you know where you are,” he said. “For example when you call in support, you don’t want to call it in on your position. You need to know what the easiest route to where you are going is.”
Kincaid said he agreed on the importance of knowing geography.
“When you’re on a patrol and need to set up camp, you want to find a place that you won’t be found,” Kincaid said.
Also paired with the land navigation was basic rifle marksmanship.
Kelly Mabry, a senior in psychology who led the riflery clinics, said basic rifle marksmansip, or BRM, gives cadets training in basic soldiery skills and helps train cadets to qualify with their rifle.
It was a good chance to “put some lead downrange,” Mabry said.
Some of the cadets competeing in the challenge shot 80 out of 80 targets, she said.
All the cadets that did the training were also training to be leaders, according to Kincaid.
“We’re constantly learning, we take what has worked and stuck with it, while we tweaked what didn’t work, “Kincaid said. “The weather wasn’t planned, but we brought extra maps and extra random gear that we had learned to bring.”
Part of ROTC members’ responsibilities is to train younger cadets, and Hayley Larsen, a senior in communication, said this training helped to establish that.
