‘Novelty Team’ places second in three-day Army competition
The day began with a buddy run while wearing military equipment and carrying a gun. The trek was three and a half miles to reach an obstacle course. There was a tower waiting for participants to climb and then haul a 60-pound backpack. After scaling down the other side, course requirements included chin-ups, monkey nets and barbed wire fences.
Finally, there was a sprint to a pond for a half-mile swim to an awaiting helicopter that flew them to a drop zone. Teams jumped out of the planes with their parachutes and had to coordinate landing in a 20-foot wide circle before running to the next event.
After landing, the teams went to a machine gun range and then a rifle and pistol range, which they called a stress shoot. The point is to raise the shooter’s heartbeat so that it is harder to aim at the moving targets. After that there was a simulated causality that showed a tank getting hit by a roadside bomb and the teams had to use the materials around them to build a device to carry the wounded on. Lastly, there was a 16-mile road march, with each person carrying 55 pounds on his or her back. And that was just day one.
Maj. Greg Soule, assistant professor of military science, and his brother Jeff, a 2001 JMU graduate, placed second in the 25th annual David E. Grange, Jr. Best Ranger Competition at Fort Benning, Ga. over the weekend.
“There were 28 teams and 12 dropped out because of heat stroke, and one guy had a heart attack,” Greg said.
The two brothers represented JMU’s ROTC in the grueling three-day competition that tested the participants physically and mentally.
“We had some cuts and bruises, but nothing major,” Soule said. “We were severely dehydrated, but it’s nothing a few I.V. bags didn’t fix.”
Greg, 33, and his brother Jeff, 28, had a unique situation that led many to believe they wouldn’t make it.
Jeff is stationed in Georgia, while Greg is in Harrisonburg. The two brothers had to train separately for the event, which is very uncommon.
“The biggest thing is that we didn’t train together,” Greg said. “We have jobs and I have a family, so it was a great feeling of satisfaction. We didn’t want to let the university down, or the ROTC, but mostly we didn’t want to let each other down.”
Getting in to the competition involved some work because teams usually have to come from the same unit. With the two brothers in different stations, they had to play on the uniqueness of their situation to help.
“We didn’t know if having a novelty team would be enough to get us over the hurdle,” Greg said. “Luckily my brother is stationed in the unit that sponsors the competition so it helped having an insider.”
Last year Jeff competed in the competition which gave Greg a great advantage because his brother knew how to train for the event.
“Jeff got sixth last year and he had the experience of last year,” Greg said. “So he planned the training method and made modifications to it based on his experience.”
The two brothers talked on the phone every day and trained at the same time, even though they weren’t physically together. They trained six to eight hours a day, three times a week. They ran, practiced their road march, lifted and swam.
They also planned trips to practice together with Jeff visiting for four days in January, and then Greg traveling to Georgia in February and March for three days.
Greg said Jeff really helped prepare him for the competition by taking things slow.
“I’d ask questions and we had a video that my mom took last year,” he said. “We took one event at a time, and Jeff would say ‘this is what is going to happen.’”
The second day involved going to different stations in a round robin method and participating in the different booths. Then they moved on to climbing three towers of different sizes, the largest at 60 feet, and repelling down the other side. Then there was the night course, a 12-hour course that participants can choose to do for as long or short as they want.
“We were in third going into the night course and were 100 points away from second,” Greg said. “We stayed out for 11 hours and 45 minutes, with only 15 minutes to spare, and we jumped into second.”
On the final day of competition, there were more obstacle courses, and another helicopter jump into water. The teams also had to carry large items to shore. Arriving on shore was not the end, because they had to zip-line to another area and compete in another buddy run for two miles to the finish line.
Finishing second after that sounds more than impressive.
“We just wanted to represent JMU and the program here,” Greg said. “We went in to show the quality that comes from JMU.”
