Photo By Scott Thornbloom | SEATTLE – Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) midshipmen, officer...... read more read more
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SEATTLE (April 09, 2022) – After a COVID-19 Pandemic two-year hiatus, the University of Washington Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) unit picked up where they left off in 2019 winning their fifth straight NROTC Northwest Navy Academic, Athletic and Drill competition, April 9.
“We’re really excited,” said Washington’s NROTC Battalion Commander Midshipman 1st Class Luke Ransom, 22, a senior from Puyallup, Washington.
“It’s exciting to see the battalion come together and pull this off. There was a lot of hard work and preparation from everyone that came into this. To host this and then to compete in this as well means lots of work by everyone in the unit. I’m really proud of their achievements.”
Ransom is scheduled to attend aviation school at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, next year after he is commissioned to ensign and graduates from Washington in June. He said he is most interested in being a fighter pilot but also has interests in flying P-8 Poseidon antisubmarine aircraft or piloting Navy helicopters. After two years of lockdowns due to the pandemic and not holding Northwest Navy, Ransom called it a fantastic weekend to be able to again have the four units together again at Northwest Navy.
“It was so great to get all the schools back out and competing here again,” Ransom said. “We compete and we have fun and we were again challenging each other but at the same time we’ve made life-long friends here at Northwest Navy. This is a great way to network and make friends. I really love having them here again and all the best to them as well.”
More than 250 NROTC midshipmen, officer candidates and Marine Corps Enlisted Commissioning Education Program (MECEP) student competitors and staff members from the Universities of Idaho/Washington State, Oregon State, Utah and Washington traveled to the Emerald City and gathered together on the University of Washington campus to participate in the return of Northwest Navy.
The University of Washington Husky Battalion planned and ran this year’s competition which has been held on a rotating basis between the universities since 1957. In 2019, Idaho planned and ran the event on their campus in Moscow, Idaho. Next year Oregon State is scheduled to host the competition on their Corvallis, Oregon, campus.
The NROTC program was established in 1926 to provide knowledgeable citizens who would serve as officers in the United States Navy. The University of Washington is one of the six original NROTC units stood up 96 years ago. The University of California at Berkeley, Georgia Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Harvard and Yale Universities were the five other original units. In 1930 these units commissioned 126 midshipmen to begin their careers as naval officers.
Just as in 2019, the midshipmen Huskies once again staved off a determined Idaho Vandals/Washington State Cougars squad to win by four points, 84 to 80. Oregon State University and the University of Utah finished third and fourth, respectively.
First year Washington commanding officer and Professor of Naval Science (PNS), Capt. Allen Adkins, said it was great his unit achieved a fifth consecutive victory but he hoped the Northwest Navy competition would mean much more for the many midshipmen who attended this year’s event.
“We have been very happy hosting everyone here again. Because it’s my first year I don’t have the experience so I’m looking forward to the weekend and hopefully we put on a good show,” Adkins said before the event began. “Because of COVID we’ve had a few more challenges than usual. Every time a new variant comes up the COs (commanding officers of the competing units) would discuss if we thought we could do this or not. It was important to monitor everything closely and thankfully the mask mandate was just dropped (in Washington) so no one had to wear a mask during the competition.”
Adkins said it was important to get everyone back together and being able to hold an in-person event.
“But they (state of Washington and the university) allowed us the latitude to hold this (Northwest Navy) again and the ROTC units wanted to come back in person and were anxious to see each other, getting to hangout together and compete against each other again,” Adkins said.
The NROTC Northwest Navy one-day competition included a Close Order Regulation Military Drill and Color Guard contest, a Physical Fitness Test (PFT) and a four-person team versus team academic scholastic bowl on military topics. Sporting events included round-robin tournaments in basketball, Ultimate Frisbee, and volleyball. There was also a new athletic event introduced: Spike Ball. Spike Ball is a competition similar to volleyball for two teams of two or three players. There is a round net either 36 or 45 inches in diameter that sits eight inches off the ground. A player from a unit spikes the ball onto the trampoline-type circular net and tries to get the other players to miss or drop the ball to the ground. Northwest Navy also included running relays and an Endurance Race where four midshipmen teams ran a cross country course around the university campus. The teams had to complete physical tasks at several stations on the course. Finally, before the drill competition a Tug-of-War single elimination tug-off between the four NROTC units was held. All of the events were held on the University of Washington campus grounds, near Husky Stadium, where the Washington PAC-12 football team play their home games each fall.
The Huskies won six events; the PFT, Soccer, Endurance Race, Spikeball, Color Guard and Regulation Drill. Idaho/Washington State came in first in the PRT, Academics, Volleyball and Ultimate Frisbee. The Oregon State Beavers Battalion captured the Ammo Can Relay and Tug-of-War title and the Utah Utes Battalion captured the basketball title. The Husky Battalion also won the Unit Leader and Platoon Leader trophies.
“It is so exciting and it’s such a relief to be able to host this event for the first time in three years. Because of COVID this is my first Northwest Navy so I’m super excited to be here and super excited it went as well as it did,” said event coordinator, Midshipman 2nd Class Hannah Woelper, 21, a junior from Annapolis, Maryland, whose father is an active-duty U. S. Navy captain serving at the U. S. Naval Academy.
Another first time University of Washington competitor, freshman Midshipman 4th Class Mikayla Gallant, 18, from Aurora, Colorado, said it
felt great to participate and win as a unit.
“To accomplish this has been very rewarding. There was a lot of PT (Physical Training) in the morning which can be tough. We have also been practicing for the drill portion every Tuesday and Thursday night for an hour-and-a-half since we started school (in August). It’s been a lot of late nights and early mornings but now well worth the work to win.”
Marine-option midshipman Gallant, who is looking at being a United States Marine Corps pilot, said so far she has liked the camaraderie of the NROTC program.
“Even though we are freshmen, we have still been welcomed into the group and everyone has a role and contributes to the big picture of us being successful as a team. Knowing the team aspect is what we are going to see in the fleet and to be able to experience that now is really cool,” she said.
The Navy ROTC program develops midshipmen mentally, morally and physically, to imbue them with the highest ideals of duty, loyalty and Navy core values. The program provides college graduates an opportunity to commission as naval officers who possess a basic professional background, are motivated toward careers in the naval service, and have potential for future development in mind and character, so as to assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship and government.
Rear Adm. Jennifer Couture, commander, Naval Service Training Command (NSTC), headquartered at Naval Station Great Lakes, Illinois, oversees 98 percent of initial officer and enlisted accessions training for the Navy, as well as the Navy’s Citizenship Development Program.
Couture and her NSTC staff supports Recruit Training Command (RTC), the Navy’s only boot camp, also at Great Lakes; NROTC units at more than 160 colleges and universities across the country; Officer Training Command (OTC) in Newport, R. I.; Navy Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (NJROTC) and Navy National Defense Cadet Corps (NNDCC) citizenship development programs at more than 600 high schools worldwide.
For more information about Navy ROTC, visit https://www.nrotc.navy.mil/ or visit the NSTC NROTC Facebook pages at https://www.facebook.com/NavalReserveOfficersTrainingCorps /.
For more information and news about Naval Service Training Command, visit https://www.netc.navy.mil/NSTC/.
| Date Taken: | 04.09.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 04.17.2022 12:40 |
| Story ID: | 418647 |
| Location: | SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 495 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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