After the regular competition was not held, two students organized a smaller-scale event.
The Bold Warrior Competition is an annual staple in the training of Ohio University’s Army ROTC cadets. Historically, the event was held at different university campuses where teams from Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee sent their best cadets to compete against one another. This year, however, a competition was not held, so the Ohio Bobcat Battalion took the initiative and held a mini-competition solely for the Bobcat cadets on Oct. 24.
Planning this year’s mini-competition were senior cadets Benjamin Witosky and Spencer Bentley. Upon getting the go-ahead to plan the in-house event, the two cadets immediately started planning how they would execute the competition, who would participate and how it would get them ready for the rigors to come.
In planning the completion, cadets Witosky and Bentley thought the most productive course of action would be to closely emulate a similar Army ROTC competition held in the spring, the Xavier Best Ranger Challenge.
With this in mind, the planners kicked off the competition with teams completing a timed swim test at 0515. Shortly after, the cadets dressed in full kit — a rifle, rucksack weighing at least 45 pounds and a vest holding essential items such as canteens and compasses — and completed a six mile ruck march as fast as possible.
Following this, the teams stayed in the same uniform and were given six hours to find and accomplish various tasks located throughout the territory of The Ridges. The tasks, all of which were graded, included crossing a simulated river using rope, weapons disassembly, a hand grenade assault course, medical evacuation drills, knot tying and land navigation. All were found using a compass, protractor and map. At the end of the six hours, teams had to be back at the starting area. Their time completing the course and scores achieved during it was taken and used along with their times in the other events to rank the teams and find a winner.
The winning team was composed of Cadet Nicholas Marquard, a sophomore, and Cadet Damon Hupp, a freshman. In his own words, “winning was about forgetting how much your feet and shoulders hurt and focusing on the task at hand whether it be tying the correct knot needed or sprinting to the finish line.”
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In creating the event, Cadet Bentley’s goals “were to have a very competitive and safe competition, which allowed cadets to learn and train on basic skill level tasks while challenging them mentally and physically. We want them to succeed in this course, but most importantly want to use it as a platform to ready us all for the competition in the spring.”
In order to prepare cadets for the challenge, Cadet Witosky knew the only way they would succeed is if “their training mimicked what they would face in the competition, which meant putting cadets in a high stress and rigorous environment as they were taught technical skills and conditioned their bodies both mentally and physically.”
With this in mind, the participants spent six weeks preparing with tough workouts and technical skills classes, five days a week starting usually at 5:30. Throughout the training pipeline, the number of participants dwindled as some found the training either was too much of a time commitment or flat out too tough. Reflecting on the six weeks of training and the competition, Cadet Brandon Quigley, a junior, explained the essence of the experience well: "Bold Warrior Challenge is all about pushing yourself beyond your limits, and then looking back and saying I could do more.”
Spencer Camp is a junior at Ohio University.
