The Lantern

Issue date: 5/1/08 Section: Campus

Photo Courtesy of Lt. Col. Todd Miller The Ohio State ROTC squad practices for the Zodiak boat race event on Lake Stillwell on the grounds of the United States Military Academy at West Point earlier this week.

Moving a wounded comrade one kilometer through rugged terrain, maneuvering over a 12-foot wall while strapped with heavy gear and making a raft out of ponchos are all in a day's work for members of Ohio State's Army ROTC.

Saturday, 11 ROTC cadets will compete in the Sandhurst Military Skills Competition at West Point, home of the United States Military Academy. OSU is one of four schools out of 274 eligible chosen to participate in the competition.

In addition to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard service academies, Britain and Canada's equivalent academies will also compete. The National Military Academy of Afghanistan was invited but dropped out at the last minute.

"They've got other things going on over there," said Army ROTC junior class instructor 1st Sgt. Dan Whitney.

The cadets have been at West Point since Sunday preparing for the competition, where they are housed with the USMA cadets.

History and preparation

The Sandhurst competition is named after the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Britain, which is the equivalent to the USMA. It began in 1967 when the RMAS presented a saber to the USMA, and since has sprawled from an inter-company USMA competition to one that involves nearly 425 cadets from around the world.

This is OSU's first team in the competition, which until 1997 was a USMA-only event. The other schools selected are Brigham Young University, Texas A&M University and the University of North Dakota. OSU was chosen based largely on its performance in a regional east-west competition, where each region selected two schools.

"There'll be teams that do well at these competitions but then they'll die off in two or three years, but our program has got a backbone to it that it just continues to be good," said Lt. Col. Todd Miller, commander of OSU's Army ROTC. "And they saw that we did well and we'd probably do well in this competition and they trusted us."

With such selectivity of participants, the pressure as one of the few ROTC schools can be tough to handle. To prove that OSU's selection was the right one, the cadets have been training twice a day, five days a week since the start of spring quarter. Campus terrain, however, is less than ideal.

"That has been the challenge. That's the reason why we're going up there for the week," Whitney said. "There's little, if anything, that we can really do here on campus that replicates some of these things."

While training for events such as marksmanship is easy because of the ROTC's shooting range, other more nautical events are less than ideal for campus' environment.

"For some of the stuff like the boat movement, there's just no way around here to get those boats and put them in the Olentangy and paddle them, so that'll be an event; the first time they see that will be at West Point," Whitney said.

The cadets making the trip will have little time to take in the scenic Hudson River view from West Point.

"Once we get there, our plan is to get in as much practice on the course as possible and to stay busy from sun up till sun down," said Tonya Burlingame, a cadet and sophomore in education.

Breaking stereotypes

At the USMA, cadets sometimes carry a sense of superiority over ROTC cadets because the USMA is difficult to get into and its graduates become generals at a high proportion. Miller, himself a graduate of the USMA, hopes that a meeting of the two will change minds for cadets of both institution types.

"It's good relationship building for both because there are stereotypes. 'They couldn't get here;' it's not that at all. It's two different things. You can't compare and they shouldn't be compared. They're both commissioning sources and they're both very good ones," Miller said. "They just are very different and we take advantage of the environments of each accordingly. It's fun for our cadets to see that and likewise."

Sean Fulford, a freshman cadet in finance, agrees.

"There are only good officers and bad ones and there has been no evidence that the cadets that attend the academy are better suited for the job. I think a strong showing for the ROTC schools will help bring down this stereotype as a competition on this stage (and) will easily show the world that ROTC programs are as capable if not better of than the USMA team," he said.

The future

Miller sees this event as a stepping stone for the Army ROTC program, not only as a military program, but also as an athletic one. He sees this event as the collegiate equivalent to the U.S. Army's Best Ranger Competition, in which soldiers compete in various athletic events on ESPN.

He said that while he does not take anything away from the more-recognized athletes, it is hard to do anything as difficult as completing the seven-mile course in less than four hours.

"They're student-athlete leaders. They're not the athletic stud that doesn't go to class - they've got damn near 4.0 grade point averages. And they're out doing that, and they're missing a week of school, and they're still coming back and getting all As," he said.

As Miller spoke from his spacious office in Blankenship Hall, decorated with a painting of a famous general, he reinforced his desired role for the Army ROTC.

"There's no coincidence that we're sitting here by an ice rink and St. John and French Field House," he said. "This place has been around for 130 years."

Tom Knox can be reached at knox.105@osu.edu.

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