Tuesday, October 23, 2001

ROTC finishes fourth and sixth in Ranger Challenge
By Sam Eaton
Staff Reporter

TCU Army ROTC teams placed fourth and sixth at the annual Ranger Challenge competition Friday and Saturday at Fort Hood in Killeen.

Thirty teams from ROTC battalions in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico competed. Teams from Texas A&Mtook first and second place in the competition.

Sophomore history major Eric Tengan said TCU had a smaller pool of cadets to choose from than Texas A&M.

“They have a full time corps, and with 600 people in the corps, they have a lot more options than we do,” Tengan said.

Junior speech communication major Sam Denton, who served as Ranger Challenge Platoon Sergeant, said this year’s team carried on TCU’s winning tradition. TCU teams placed third and 12th last year.

“Not only have we continued the tradition, we’ve exceeded it,” Denton said. “Scoring that highly with both teams is something to be very proud of.”

Cadets trained for the competition with a rigorous routine of sit-ups, push-ups and running several times a week since the beginning of the semester.

Ranger Challenge consists of seven events: rope bridge, physical training test, a patrolling exam, M-16 rifle disassembly and assembly, the grenade assault course, land navigation course and a 10-kilometer ruck run.

Junior environmental science major Brett Butler said the grenade assault course was a difficult event.

“The grenade assault course was pretty strenuous,” Butler said. “There are three or four targets that you had to throw a grenade at and go behind certain obstacles and you’re graded on your accuracy, your form and how fast you’re done.”

Battalion Commander Todd Anderson commanded the white team, and led them to a ninth place finish in the grenade assault course.

Junior history major Ed Adams, collapsed following the ruck run, where cadets run 6.2 miles together in full combat gear, carrying a 20- to 30-pound backpack. Adams received medical care for dehydration after the competition.

“The ruck run hurts,” Adams said. “There’s a reason the ruck run is at the very end. We were all pretty exhausted.”

Despite an activities schedule that the purple team said was a disadvantage, they still managed to finish second overall in the ruck run.

The schedule called for the purple team to do the land navigation course immediately prior to the ruck run. The land navigation course requires three to four miles of running.

Tengan, a member of the purple team, said he was pleased with the second-place finish.

“We were pretty impressed with our ruck run because it was really hot and we had just finished our land navigation,” Tengan said.

Denton said the scheduling also hurt the purple team on their first event, weapons assembly and disassembly.

The event consists of a 50-yard dash to an M-16 rifle, where each cadet disassembles and then reassembles the weapon. A function check is performed to make sure the reassembling was done properly and then the cadet sprints back to the start.

“Our first event was weapons, which turned out not to be a good idea because it began at 7:30 in the morning,” Denton said. “This meant that the weather was still very cold, the dew was still on the ground, the weapons ended up being wet and they would jam and our hands weren’t warmed up. It was much harder to disassemble and reassemble the small parts.”

TCU teams excelled at the written patrolling test. The purple team scored the second highest average score of all competing teams. The white team finished third.

At last Thursday’s Army ROTC meeting, all cadets participating in Ranger Challenge shaved their heads bald to show unity.

“I really credit our success to the fact that we shave our heads every year before competition,” Denton said.

Sam Eaton
s.m.eaton@student.tcu.edu