Rat activities

LongGreyLine Hopeful

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Aug 18, 2008
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Hey everyone,



Sorry if this is short or has any grammar issues. I'm currently writing this on my phone. I was wondering if their are any restrictions on clubs or sports while you are under the ratline? Such as you can't play on the varsity lacrosse team until you breakout or you're not able to join a certain club/group. I believe I heard something like this is applied to your SADD team.
 
Hey everyone,



Sorry if this is short or has any grammar issues. I'm currently writing this on my phone. I was wondering if their are any restrictions on clubs or sports while you are under the ratline? Such as you can't play on the varsity lacrosse team until you breakout or you're not able to join a certain club/group. I believe I heard something like this is applied to your SADD team.
I'm sure that RahVaMil2009 will give a more detailed answer but I believe that you can not participate in Club sports for the 1st Semester of Rat year- so Rugby for example. You will be pretty well consumed with Rat Challenge thru Thanksgiving, followed by the Rat Olympics and various and sundry other "Rat" stuff. I think Second semester club sports are open to you. Varsity sports are for sure available- Rat or not- although second semester sports might not have rats on "permit" for the first semester (I'm not certain of that).
 
Rats are permitted (and encouraged) to participate in NCAA athletics. I will warn you though, being on an NCAA team takes up a lot of time. You'll miss out on certain other Ratline activities and depending on the team, and you will likely miss a sizeable amount of classes as well due to away games. Baseball players can't afford to get sick spring semester; they travel so much that they run the risk of failing classes due to excessive absences. You'll also probably get shorter furloughs. Football, mens and womens soccer, and some of the other teams come back 2-3 weeks before the school year starts in August. Our basketball team only got four days for Christmas/New Years while the rest of the Corps got roughly 2.5 weeks.

The restriction you may have heard about is club sports. In general, rats are not permitted to participate in club sports (this includes rugby and women's softball) until after Breakout. There really isn't time for it during the Ratline, anyway. Club sports practice on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. All non-NCAA athletes participate in Rat Challenge on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and generally there's Cadre Training Time on Wednesday afternoons.

A couple years back, we had both NCAA and club lacrosse. I'm not sure if that's still the case or not. If it is, you would be able to play for the NCAA team during the Ratline (assuming you make the cut), but you would have to wait 'til after Breakout if you wanted to play with the lacrosse club.
 
Thanks for the valuable information everyone. I'm definitely looking into the NCAA lacrosse team. Seeing that all NCAA lacrosse seasons start in February that would most likely put it post-breakout. Do you know if it would be like football where I would have to come before matriculation day to get down to begin training immediately? If so how would that work out with STP?
Thanks
 
Lacrosse

If you want to learn more, I would email the head lacrosse coach, Coach Shirk. You can find his contact information on the VMI Keydets website.

You probably need to keep in mind a couple of things. VMI Lacrosse plays a very competitive national Division I schedule with games against Army, Navy and Virginia among other. Lacrosse is a full year sport. Fall ball practice starts in early September and goes through the end of October. Winter conditioning is in November and December and practice starts 30 days before the first game (January 7th or so). The season ends in May. It is an incredible commitment.

VMI has made a strong commitment to lacrosse and has excellent coaches and facilities. The vast majority of players are recruited athletes and the class of 2010+3 already has 10 athletes who have signed national letters of intent to play lax at VMI.(see laxpower.com recruits).

Contact the coaches and they can provide more information.

Good Luck
 
If you want to learn more, I would email the head lacrosse coach, Coach Shirk. You can find his contact information on the VMI Keydets website.

You probably need to keep in mind a couple of things. VMI Lacrosse plays a very competitive national Division I schedule with games against Army, Navy and Virginia among other. Lacrosse is a full year sport. Fall ball practice starts in early September and goes through the end of October. Winter conditioning is in November and December and practice starts 30 days before the first game (January 7th or so). The season ends in May. It is an incredible commitment.

VMI has made a strong commitment to lacrosse and has excellent coaches and facilities. The vast majority of players are recruited athletes and the class of 2010+3 already has 10 athletes who have signed national letters of intent to play lax at VMI.(see laxpower.com recruits).

Contact the coaches and they can provide more information.

Good Luck

VMI Lacrosse Set to Open Season at Navy
http://www.vmikeydets.com//ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=9800&ATCLID=3664249
 
Does the SAD fall under club sports? I mean it isn't exactly a sport unless they compete in 3-gun challenge. And how about the high-power team? I ask this because I shoot competitive service rifle here at home and I also am looking at getting into 3-gun tactical shooting and those teams have really piqued my interest. I haven't really seen things like that at the other schools I've applied to (mainly Norwich at this point, as they were 2nd choice and I was accepted).
 
SAD (Special Actions Detachment) isn't a club sport, but a general interest club. It's an interservice group that focuses on small units tactics. I believe they meet three times a week (Tues/Wed/Fri, just like a club sport), but it could be more or less.

Unfortunately, we don't have a high power rifle team. Everyone gets a chance to fam fire (M16 and M9) during their rat year (through a program called New Cadet Military Training, or NCMT), and the individual ROTC programs conduct their own weapons training. Other than that, we've got an NCAA (smallbore) rifle team, but that's it. Several cadets have discussed starting high power rifle and/or IPSC clubs, but no one ever has.
 
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