Ranger Challenge Team

All I know is that my DS made the team at his school. When and where are the competitions? I do not get details as he is a rook. Any info on the competitions will be appreciated!

Depends on the brigade/region, they are usually at a local AD/NG training area or base.

http://www.serviceacademyforums.com/showthread.php?t=21984
I thought I saw this topic covered recently

This is the first time I've seen interest by some parents to attend the Ranger Challenge Competition. Philmont, not saying that is what you are asking, this refers more to the thread Clarkson referred to. My son would tell us when he was going but never mentioned anything about people coming to watch, I think he would have died if he saw dad standing there with a camera..HaHa. I didn't even know visitors were allowed. Do people actually go to watch, he said they never had anybody watching.

This is all new to me... as a parent of a freshman at a SMC. I don't know either, if people go to watch; just looking for more info about the event itself. I did find out that it includes the following:
Map Reading
PT test
Hand Grenade Assault Course
One Rope Bridge
M16 Dissassembly/Assembly
Orienteering
10k Force March

sounds pretty fun!

philmont said:

This is all new to me... as a parent of a freshman at a SMC. I don't know either, if people go to watch; just looking for more info about the event itself. I did find out that it includes the following:
Map Reading
PT test
Hand Grenade Assault Course
One Rope Bridge
M16 Dissassembly/Assembly
Orienteering
10k Force March

sounds pretty fun!

Click to expand...

Unless it's raining..HaHa

You covered most of the events, they change a but from year to year to keep thing interesting. They also have First Aid. This year I was told by my son that they have changed the Ruck March...more like a run. Instead of doing the full 10k at once they will Ruck from event to event and total the times of all the Ruck Runs. I guess this is more in line with the desire to make the switch from distance training to shorter and faster runs.

This will be an exciting Ranger Challenge for my son's this year. I have one sone who is a MS4 and One that is a MS1. The MS1 made the Alpha Team so he will be able to compete along side his older brother. That was actually one of the goals that made him work out so much this summer, he's the fastest one on the team. I do wish I could see it, it is the only time they have ever been able to compete together on the same team, I hope they get pictures.

Good luck to your son, he'll have a blast.

in my son's battalion, the ranger challenge team selection is not final yet. after several steps of winnowing, he is the last MS1 left. He says, if the rule requires at least one MS1, he will definitely make it. If not, he is not sure whether he will be selected: it's boiled down to him or an MS III.

His understanding is that traditionally they would include at least one MS I but he heard that may do away with this requirement.

Any insight?

educateme said:

His understanding is that traditionally they would include at least one MS I but he heard that may do away with this requirement.

Click to expand...

My understanding is they have to have freshman on the team. Not sure how many but 2 MS 1s made the team at my DS school.

My son just sent us email. He made it! Not an alternate. The real member. Turns out, he would have made it even if they did not have the requirement for a freshman. He send us a screen shot of the final roster distributed as a text message. Like everything they do, they rank ordered the team members, and he was up there, not at all the last member to be included into the alpha team (is it what they call for the non-alternate team member?).

I am so proud of him.

Congratulations to your son. You should be proud!

thank you! this meant a lot for him especially since he made a promise to himself that he would not have anyone speaking behind his back "why did such a bozo get the expensive 4 year scholarship?"

Out of ~60 freshmen cadets that joined the program, he is the only 4 years scholarship cadet. There were a few more that CC awarded the scholarships to but they were not admitted to the school, and CC did not back fill the slots (we all heard about it: the budget issue!).

It looks like he is on his way to make good on the promise he made to himself.

educateme said:

thank you! this meant a lot for him especially since he made a promise to himself that he would not have anyone speaking behind his back "why did such a bozo get the expensive 4 year scholarship?"

Out of ~60 freshmen cadets that joined the program, he is the only 4 years scholarship cadet. There were a few more that CC awarded the scholarships to but they were not admitted to the school, and CC did not back fill the slots (we all heard about it: the budget issue!).

It looks like he is on his way to make good on the promise he made to himself.

Click to expand...

I can relate to those comments.

My younger son had the same thoughts, added to that was the fact that his older brother is a MS4 at the same school. His brother was the fastest, highest PT, and No.1 on the battalion OML. My younger son's biggest fear was.."I have to live up to that?". Younger son is also one of just a couple scholarship cadets, which added a bit more pressure. Making the Alpha Team with his brother has really relieved a lot of that stress. Beating his brothers best time by 20 sec. didn't hurt either, no competition there...right.

Congrats to your son, he will have a great time, hopefully all son's and daughters from this board will meet up at the final competition at West Point.

Good luck to all the cadets.

FTX this weekend and Ranger Challenge next weekend. Good thing he likes fresh air and loves MREs.

Dont know if this applies to all brigades but supposedly the APFT is being replaced in Ranger Challenge Competition by some other form of fun.

We just finished our Ranger Challenge and it was by far a blast, but my feet are definitely feeling this weekend. Here's basically what our schedule was for Ranger Challenge. I'll estimate the times since I don't remember the exact time we were allotted for the event

Friday:
Opening Ceremonies
Night Land Navigation (2 1/2 hours) (covered approx. 5 miles)

Saturday:
APFT (1 hr)
Obstacle Course (1 hr)
EST (1 hr)
Day land Navigation (~6 hrs) (covered approx. 6.5 miles)
-events included in the day land navigation
-finding navigation points (7 of them) to deduct 6 minutes off your total time
-Grenade/ clamore assault course
-Humvee pull/ Tire flip
-Evacuating a causality (calling up a 9 line, taking appropriate medical measures, carrying a 180lb litter up and down a designated hill)

Sunday:
10k Ruck march
Closing ceremonies

Forgive me if I forgot any events, its been quite the weekend. It was definitely a great learning experience.

ascored

is this your battalion's way of formally launching the team? Or, is this already part of the competition?

What does "competition" mean? Is it like Olympics, where opposing teams are getting together to have a meet (track) or a match (like a volley ball). Or, is it the case that each team comes to the site on a weekend assigned to them, do the deed, and at the end of the season, the scores of all the teams are compared? So, in this case, no actual, live, real time competition among the teams?

Just curious. My son made it to the alpha team as a MS I this year.

educateme said:

ascored

is this your battalion's way of formally launching the team? Or, is this already part of the competition?

What does "competition" mean? Is it like Olympics, where opposing teams are getting together to have a meet (track) or a match (like a volley ball). Or, is it the case that each team comes to the site on a weekend assigned to them, do the deed, and at the end of the season, the scores of all the teams are compared? So, in this case, no actual, live, real time competition among the teams?

Just curious. My son made it to the alpha team as a MS I this year.

Click to expand...

This was actually our brigade's Ranger Challenge Competition. So essentially it was where our team would get an allotted number of points based on how well we performed a certain event such as the humvee pull or the night land navigation. At the end they tallied up every team's number of points then ranked them to determine final placement. There was no "actual/live" competition among the cadets, but we would be competing in an event side by side with another team. Take the obstacle course for example, we had another team trailing us throughout the course in the lane next to us. As a side note it was definitely a great ruck march as the brigade's colonel and his XO ran the course (without rucks) and stopped to talk with each of the teams and the team's personal personally as we were rucking the course.

I forgot to mention, there were different team categories. You were competing against teams in the same "category" as you. The categories were:
9 Man Team
9 Female Team (Our Brigade didn't have any)
5 Man Team
5 Female Team

I was placed on a 5 Man team interestingly enough as our 5 female team fell out in the week proceeding the competition. My team consisted of 2 females and 3 males and 1 male alternate. We were still scored amongst the other 5 man teams even though we were a mixed gender team. We did well in most of the events we did. We were quite the young team as the competing cadets on my team were 3 MS1's and 2 MS2's. I was one of the 2 MS2's.

Thanks for the reports, AscoreD. Nice to hear you enjoyed it.

By the way, were you housed in barracks or outside? I assume you got adequate rest on Friday and Saturday.

We were housed in the barracks. In regards to sleep... there wasn't much compared to an average college student. Friday night we got about 3-4 hours. Saturday night we got about 5-6 hours. Thats pretty typical for field training out on base for us.

Thought I would give an update on my son's Ranger Challenge competition.

The competition was this past weekend, it looks like the brigades may have had different competition guidlines. AscoreD's competition was more like last years Ranger Challenge. My son's Brigade. the 8th, patterned their competition more after the Sandhurst Competition. The events were all in one day.

They started the stop watch and then the teams started the first station, PT Test, they would then ruck run to the next station, do that task and ruck to the next and so on until they completed the entire days events. When they finished the last event they clicked the stop watch again and that was their time. I believe they did deductions and additionns to the time based on each station and how they performed. The competition was completed in one day and went straight from start to finish with no breaks. They were some tired puppies when they finished the last station.

It was great that both my son's were able to compete on the Alpha Team, one a MS4 and one a MS1. This was the first time both have been able to compete together, they had a blast....really tired...but a blast.

The good news in all this is that they won the competition, they beat the second place team by 15 min.

Now it is unclear what will happen now. There were 5 seperate competitions in the 8th Brigade, they will either tally all the points and pick a team from the 5 winners or they may have a Brigade competition to see which team will travel to the Sandhurst Competition. Rightn now they are just waiting to see how it shakes out. They competed against 9 teams, very proud of both of them.

Good luck to all the Ranger Challenge teams still competing.