East Carolinian

Issue date: 3/19/09 Section: News

Media Credit: staff Photo

ECU's Army ROTC Pirate Battalion is looking to bring home a win next month in the annual Sandhurst Competition.

Held April 17 and 18 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Sandhurst Competition will feature 52 teams from the United States and abroad. West Point will field 32 teams along with two teams from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy Canada, Australia, Spain, Chile, West Point prep school, Air Force Academy, Naval Academy, Coast Guard Academy and eight ROTC teams divided amongst two regions in the U.S.: eastern and western.

The eastern region will feature ECU, Appalachian State, Florida Tech and Georgetown. The western region will feature Hawaii, Iowa, Texas A&M and BYU.

Each team will have 15 people but only 11 will go on to the competition and nine will compete. Every team must field a senior, junior, sophomore, freshman and a female. It is also necessary to have an alternate that fills each requirement because if it is not met the result is automatic disqualification.

"We have an advantage going into the team because we have so much camaraderie and we've been working together really well," said squad leader and ECU senior, Matthew Kane. "We also have a really good female on the team."

The two-day competition will take place along a seven-mile mountainous course and feature a number of different events including an obstacle course featuring 10 or 11 different obstacles, boat operations, scenario, rope bridge, weapons site, marksmanship target discrimination (which will take place at night), a leader's reaction course, wall climb, basic rifle marksmanship, combat swim and commandant's challenge.

"They've changed the standards this year to where everybody has a fair advantage," Kane said. "No one's ever done the course like it's being done this year."

Every penalty made throughout the competition results in a time penalty, which will ultimately affect each team's final score because the entire competition is timed. Teams must also maintain a 50-meter interval between the first and last man at all times. Every time the team is caught outside that 50 meters will result in a penalty.

The competition is not only physical, but mental as well.

"You have to think about, 'should I put my squad through this or should I not because it would drain their energy and they won't have enough energy to finish the course or we're going to be so drained that we're going to lose because we're going to lose time,'" Kane said. "The biggest thing about the whole competition is making that decision and then also working with your team and making sure everybody's still able to finish the course at a good pace and maintain their endurance."

ECU's Sandhurst team has been training six days a week since January. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are running days, Tuesdays and Thursdays are focused on events and Saturdays are field-training exercises.

"The big advantage we have in ROTC is working together six days a week and we know each other's strengths and weaknesses and can watch out for that," Kane said. "We just have a lot of time training together and it really helps."

After winning the Ranger Challenge this past October, ECU ROTC has high hopes for the Sandhurst Competition.

"There are over 300 ROTC colleges out there," Kane said. "Just getting invited was an honor in itself. This is our chance to show the world that we [ECU] can go out there and hang with everybody else and against foreign nations, which is going to be pretty cool."



This writer can be contacted at news@theeastcarolinian.com.

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