Photo By David Poe | An Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadet fires an M4 carbine at the 2018...... read more read more
The University of New Mexico won the 2018 regional Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Ranger Challenge, hosted by the University of Texas at El Paso ROTC, at Fort Bliss, Texas, Oct. 12-13. The Lobos topped ROTC teams from across the Southwest in the annual military skills competition and will represent them during 5th ROTC Brigade’s competition at Camp Bullis Military Training Reservation, near San Antonio, in November.
The competition challenged teams made from 120 cadets from Southwest schools that also included: nearby New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico; the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Texas Tech University, Embry-Riddle University, Northern Arizona University and Grand Canyon University.
UTEP, NMSU and UNM’s flagship campus at Albuquerque, New Mexico, commonly host the challenge due to their centralized locations in the region.
Despite a rain-adjusted schedule on Friday, a day that saw El Paso receive almost an inch of rain in a 24-hour period, 40 times the historical daily average for the Sun City in October, the challenge included events highlighted by buddy carries, night land navigation, improvised explosive device protocol scenarios, and a team marksmanship stress shoot Saturday morning, among other tasks.
Lt. Col. Jason Albright, the commander of the Fighting Miners battalion at UTEP, as well as a former battery commander at Fort Bliss, said he hoped the challenge offered the cadets an opportunity to “build confidence within themselves, their teams and their equipment.”
“It’s realistic training for them,” said Albright, a prior enlisted Soldier. “It’s about pushing them out of their comfort zones – it’s about testing the Soldier in a ‘360 sort of way.’ It’s about having the grit, but also, do they have the skills that it takes?”
If they can put a winning streak together, UNM can compete at Sandhurst, an annual international military skills competition held at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, which is a goal for ROTC detachments nationwide.
Master Sgt. Adam Heywood, a UTEP senior military science instructor, the lead organizer for the event and a 23-year Army veteran, said despite all of the work involved with setting up the event and execution, he hoped the weekend was worthwhile for the cadets from a training standpoint.
“Obviously, safety is number one, but beyond that, all of the challenges are ‘Skill Level One’ tasks that we’re teaching in our curriculum and they’re getting to apply them in a live environment,” he said. “These are the best-of-the-best physically and mentally. We hope they leave here with a better understanding of how a team works – that’s the intent.”
| Date Taken: | 10.12.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 12.26.2018 21:55 |
| Story ID: | 305208 |
| Location: | FORT BLISS, TEXAS, US |
| Web Views: | 157 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Ranger Up: UNM ROTC wins regional UTEP Ranger Challenge at Bliss, by David Poe, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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