Cool programs at USNA...?

endoftheline

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hey i was wondering does the USNA have cool programs like the USAFA? USAFA has a ton of unbelievable opportunities that cadets can take part of....skydiving, soaring, powered flight, etc. that seem to get a LOT of public recognition. does the USNA have any kind of counterpart?
 
Yes to skydiving and soaring, not sure on powered flight. Soaring is a relatively new program you can do for summer training, skydiving is a club. A few times a week there's a ground school class you can take too. If boats are your thing, there's also YPs and sailing for summer training. Sailing is a good deal training block, YPs...not so much.
There's a lot of wicked cool things to do and unbelievably awesome things available. Do you have anything specific in mind, or just "cool stuff?" Summer training or ac year?
 
hm.....the way i understand it the skydiving club costs money and is not Navy sponsored, basically it's on the mids free time to do it. no different than a civilian college.
whereas at the USAFA there is a whole academy sponsored skydiving team that trains at the academy and competes against the best teams in the nation, and jumps in nationally acclaimed sporting events. there is also a skydiving club as well, but members are not nearly as involved as the wings of blue.

about the soaring, i understand it is a summer program only, and held somewhere far away from annapolis? the AFA has its own soaring program where the cadets themselves are the ones flying and running the show year round.

but the AFA doesn't have sailing :). it has rock climbing and scuba diving, but sailing must be pretty cool. all in all though i'm still convinced that the AFA greatly defeats navy when it comes to the degree and amount of "coolness" in its programs. but maybe there's more?
 
hm.....the way i understand it the skydiving club costs money and is not Navy sponsored, basically it's on the mids free time to do it. no different than a civilian college.
whereas at the USAFA there is a whole academy sponsored skydiving team that trains at the academy and competes against the best teams in the nation, and jumps in nationally acclaimed sporting events. there is also a skydiving club as well, but members are not nearly as involved as the wings of blue.
about the soaring, i understand it is a summer program only, and held somewhere far away from annapolis? the AFA has its own soaring program where the cadets themselves are the ones flying and running the show year round.

but the AFA doesn't have sailing :). it has rock climbing and scuba diving, but sailing must be pretty cool. all in all though i'm still convinced that the AFA greatly defeats navy when it comes to the degree and amount of "coolness" in its programs. but maybe there's more?

Soaring is held at USNA. It's summer training, but you stay in Bancroft Hall. The days you go flying you drive out to the airfield, but it's not super far. There's also a soaring team that does stuff year round. Also rock climbing and scuba diving. And Combat Arms Team. And Infantry Skills Team. And Paintball, Mountaineering Club (which does much more than Mountaineering), Semper Fi, FOREX cruises, Adventure Racing, High Powered Rifle...The point being there's plenty of cool stuff to do. There's probably a ton more I'm forgetting, but those are the ones I'm thinking of off the top of my head.

Also, think about how many of these things you'd be doing. Choosing a school (and service!) based on which has "cooler ECAs" is downright silly, especially considering that you'd realistically not be doing that many. Right now, for example, I'm involved in Semper Fi, Mountaineering Club, and kinda-sorta Adventure Racing, which all only really do stuff on the weekends. Academics, in company stuff like having a billet, and PT take up a lot of time. Adding an ECA that's very active on top of that is an easy way to completely drain your energy, particularly if you're active in a varsity or club sport.
 
Sorry if this rubs you the wrong way, but IMO, if you're deciding between any service academy and any other SA or college based on their clubs, you might want to re-think your priority.

Cool programs at Navy? When you finish your 4 years by the Bay, you can put in your request to have arguably the greatest range of service selections (except for USMMA): pilot (Navy or Marine Corps), flight officer, submarine officer, infantry (MC), SEAL, surface warfare officer.

There are lots of ECAs and teams at Navy. Some programs (like varsity sports and the Glee Clubs) are pretty much fully funded, although Women's Glee Club members did pay for a portion of their trip to Brazil last year. Other clubs/ECAs are self-funded, such as the Equestrian Club. Others fall somewhere in between. My guess is that with the coming military budget cuts, there will be programs at each of the academies that either get cut altogether, or become "self-funded."
 
Hurricane 12,
Do you know if the USNA Fencing Club/Team is an actual team?
I know that it was dropped from varsity status quite a while back, but I was wondering if it was a club or intramural sport, or just a "club/ECA"
Thank you!
 
Hurricane 12,
Do you know if the USNA Fencing Club/Team is an actual team?
I know that it was dropped from varsity status quite a while back, but I was wondering if it was a club or intramural sport, or just a "club/ECA"
Thank you!

They're a club/ECA with intramural exemption that competes. What that means is, if you do fencing you don't have to do intramurals and you get to go on movement orders to compete in tournaments or whatever.
 
Bear in mind that when you see the picture of the Yard, you see pretty much all of the Yard and most of the turf owned by USNA; it is about 350 acres as compared to the thousands of acres owned by USMA and USAFA. Most of NAVY's "campus" already is fully employed, and there is not much more Severn available for landfill ops. We do have a lot of water access, however, if you enjoy sailing.
 
USAFA may have plenty of cool ECAs for flying around in the sky, but with the Naval Academy I travelled to Japan, Italy and England, rowed top tier crew, sailed Annapolis to Boston 40 miles off the coast on a 40-ft yacht, performed w/ world class symphonies across the US and in the Vatican and Wells Cathedral, and presented a paper on the Middle East at a conference in Finland.

And there aren't very many Air Force Lieutenants on patrols out here in Afghanistan.

Semper Fi
 
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