Photo By Sgt. Alvin Pujols | U.S. 7th FLEET AREA OF OPERATIONS (August 06, 2016) -- U.S. Marine Corporal Tori C....... read more read more
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A woman walks up to a pull up bar. She takes a deep breath, leaps up and grabs hold … one, two, three, four. She cranked out pull up after pull up … eighteen, nineteen, twenty …, when she couldn’t do any more, she dropped down and her Marine Corps issued boots seemingly puffed up smoke … twenty-six. Her name, now in bold black letters, holds her place as the female pull up record holder aboard the USS Boxer.
Corporal Tori C. Best, a combat engineer with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, holds the female record with 26 pull ups only seven behind the male record holder aboard the USS Boxer during Western Pacific Deployment 16-1.
Best’s upbringing gave her the tools to excel and overcome any challenge, whether physical and mental. She grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, where she led a very active lifestyle. She loved being outdoors and doing activities that challenged her physically, like running, climbing and hiking.
“I grew up really active,” said Best. “I did cross country running and I eventually got into rock and ice climbing. I remember every summer we’d be hiking and fishing. It was this really active lifestyle. So it was never a thought about going to the gym and being fit. It was something we needed to be to enjoy life.”
As Best continued to grow she came to a fork in the road, which challenged her beliefs.
“I was born in the states but my family is Canadian and it is my belief that if you enter a new country you should serve in its military,” said Best.
This decision caught Best’s parents by surprise, who believed she would continue down the path of academics.
“My parents were really surprised by my decision because I graduated high school early and was already enrolled in a college. They thought I would continue down whatever career path I chose,” Best said. “But I knew if I continued down that career path I would never get the opportunity to fulfill that dream of being in the military. I wanted to join first, before I went to college.”
So Best went to her local recruiter’s office and demonstrated her abilities. Even then, she was in top physical shape and the recruiter took note.
“Being an infantry Marine was something my recruiter brought up the first time I went to see him,” said Best. “He saw I could do pull ups and asked me if I was interested in going to Infantry Training Battalion and it really sparked my interest.”
After Marines go through boot camp, they are then given orders to the School of Infantry where they begin combat training either in Marine Combat Training or Infantry Training Battalion. Best would be one of the first female volunteers to go through the Infantry Training Battalion at School of Infantry East. It wasn’t until the Fall of 2013, that female Marines were given the opportunity to go through ITB.
“At the end of boot camp our drill instructors sat us all down and gave us a brief explaining going to ITB as a test subject. All those who didn’t want to do it got up and left,” she said. “And then there was a group of us left and we were excited because this is what we wanted to do from the beginning. We were all ready, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, to change history. And I think that’s how we all went into it.”
The Marine Corps’ two Infantry Training Battalions challenge Marines both physically and mentally. Marines who complete the course take their place at the tip of the spear for the Corps. The challenges push Marines to their limits and beyond with 20 mile hikes carrying a full combat load that can weigh up to 85 lbs. For Best it was no different, except for her gender because Best would soon face the stigma that women don’t belong in combat roles.
Best said the beginning of ITB was difficult because they had to overcome the stigma that came along with being females in the infantry. It never mattered who was to the left or to the right, she said, they had to prove that they were just as good as the males. Once that barrier was broken the class worked well together.
But even after two months of working with those Marines, there was something else that weighed heavy on Best’s mind, soon she would be graduating and not leaving with those Marines whom she’d grown so close to.
“I worked with these men for two months straight and that stigma fell apart,” she said. “We were just men and women going through ITB with all the same goals of passing. We completely forgot that we wouldn’t be going to the fleet with them. On graduation day we saw the same people we’ve worked day in and day out with graduating while all of us, just because we’re female, had to go off to our other [military occupational specialty] and that was difficult.”
At the time, the female Marine graduates were a part of a two-year research endeavor to help the Marine Corps continue its ongoing gender integration efforts. This meant even after graduating ITB, the female Marines weren’t allowed to go to infantry-based battalions, such as rifle companies and artillery batteries.
After graduating from the School of Infantry, Best went on to complete schooling as a combat engineer, which was the primary MOS she chose because she couldn’t be placed in an infantry battalion. She was stationed aboard Camp Pendleton, California with Combat Logistics Battalion 13, where she faced some of the same difficulties again.
“When I first joined the fleet, one of the biggest difficulties was once again dealing with that stigma,” said Best. “At the end of my combat engineer school, not only had I gone through ITB, but as a female I still wasn’t allowed to do a third of my job. I was not allowed to go to the combat engineer battalion because it was still reserved for males.”
Best even had a hard time finding mentors due to most of the senior engineers being from a combat engineer battalion, whom never had the opportunity to mentor females and therefore focused more on the male engineers
“Instead of treating me like the guys, the more senior Marines always tried to mentor the guys more because that’s all they knew,” Best said.
Luckily for Best, a mentor presented himself; Sergeant Kaleb Bill, a combat engineer with the 13th MEU, was from an engineering support battalion and had the experience and expertise of mentoring both genders not only as engineers but as Marines.
“I remember we were all working and something didn’t go as planned,” she said. “He corrected us all, all of us, and it was great, and it sounds funny but we didn’t have much direction at the time and here was this person who was putting in his time and effort and actually teaching us our MOS. And he treated me the exact same as he did my male counterparts.”
Thanks to mentorship like this, Best kept growing as a Marine and a person. She continued to impress her leadership by taking charge and giving everything 100 percent. She left a lasting impression on her staff non-commissioned officer.
“My first impression of her was that she was very outgoing, mature and stood out as a sharp Marine,” said Master Sgt. Rafael Ortiz, the logistics combat element operations chief and Best’s SNCOIC. “We had a field operation at Fire Base Gloria. I heard a Marine barking orders to set up the command operations center, which is usually my job or one of my sergeants. At the time, she was a lance corporal, and she took the lead building up the COC! The way she was handling the situation looked like something I would do personally. She was running a battalion COC set up and that gave me a huge sense of pride. And in my head I said ‘Yes she’s going to be a good NCO.’”
Best has had many mentors through her struggles and experiences that have all helped shaped her to be the Marine she is now. Thanks to these experiences, Best was able to achieve one of her personal bests.
“It was the competition between me and my brother that sparked my ability to do pull ups,” Best said. “I was doing ten pull ups at a time before I enlisted and even before I went to boot camp I was able to do sixteen. Then, during ITB, we would do pyramid workouts where we did five pull ups all the way down to one and back up. I started including five pull ups after every work out and during the competition on the Boxer I was able to do 26 pull ups.”
As fitness standards change, Best will continue to adapt and stay at the top of her game in order to stay competitive.
“With the physical fitness standards changing you can’t have that mentality of ‘I can’t do a pull up because I’m a female.’ You can’t push aside physical fitness,” said Best.
As Best stays flexible with the changing standards, she has a few words of guidance for anyone looking to set new personal bests or overcoming a difficult challenge: “You just have to start and do it!”
Best will have to maintain her physical and mental excellence because combat roles will soon be open to qualified female Marines, to move into infantry-based jobs. But she has chosen to end her military career early to continue her academic career once her obligated service time expires.
| Date Taken: | 08.08.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 08.08.2016 11:06 |
| Story ID: | 206383 |
| Location: | U.S. 7TH FLEET AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY |
| Hometown: | ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, US |
| Web Views: | 2,573 |
| Downloads: | 4 |
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