CEDARVILLE UNIVERSITY

News release

CEDARVILLE, Ohio — Cedarville University student Victoria Collett of Harrodsburg joined a team of Cedarville Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets to beat out much larger ROTC programs in a test of will, perseverance, physical endurance and teamwork to win the  7seventh Brigade Ranger Challenge Competition at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The competition was held Nov. 2-4.

On Friday, the team navigated three different circuits, each of which included many obstacle course events. One obstacle included climbing and descending a 45-degree wall as many times as possible without any outside equipment — all while blindfolded. Another physical test required team members to hold themselves up on a dip bar for as long as possible, up to 10 minutes.

The last activity on Friday was a tug-of-war round robin with the top five other teams — Ohio University, Indiana University, Michigan State University, the University of Notre Dame and East Tennessee State University. After quick victories, the Cedarville cadets came out on top.

Saturday morning started with a  three-mile march carrying a 40-pound rucksack — the military equivalent of a backpack. After that, it was on to 15 different sites where teams carried out various missions, from creating a 100-foot-long rope bridge over a muddy gully to “blowing up” three different sites with dummy hand grenades while being fired on with paintball guns. In another mission, members completed a hatchet-throwing challenge.

The team completed the 15 missions two hours ahead of schedule, considerably faster than any other team, and then made an additional five-mile ruck march back to the starting point.

Collett with the team of 11 students beat cadets representing 17 schools from Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan.

Their next step is the 2019 Sandhurst Military Skills Competition in April, where they will compete with the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. The spring competition will take place at West Point, New York, and will include seven other regional Ranger Challenge champions and teams from various foreign academies, which in the past have included Australia, Italy, Japan and Afghanistan.

Located in southwest Ohio, Cedarville University is an accredited, Christ-centered, Baptist institution with an enrollment of 4,193 undergraduate, graduate, and online students in more than 150 areas of study. Cedarville was founded in 1887.