It's 6 a.m. on Saturday. It's cold and dark, and a steady rain dots the empty streets. The campus appears abandoned, and it looks like the day will turn out to be one best spent indoors.
But the quiet of morning is broken by the sound of boots hitting the sidewalk. A group of 20 men and women in military fatigues cut swiftly through the darkness, with 35-pound rucksacks on their backs.
Members of the Ohio University ROTC participated in the Bold Warrior Challenge on Saturday, an event that lasted from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and tested the physical and mental strength of those who partook, Cadet Captain Westin Hart, an OU senior studying war and peace, said.
The participants were divided into 10 teams of two and earned points for how well they completed each task.
First was the swimming event, where participants had to swim 100 meters in their fatigues at OU's Aquatic Center and then work together to push a rubber brick across the bottom of the pool.
Next, they made their way around campus as part of the “ruck march:” a four-mile march with a heavy backpack. When they arrived back in the equipment room in Peden Stadium, the cadets took turns trying to assemble an M16 rifle, a M9 pistol, an M240B machine gun and an M249 light machine gun, each within two minutes.
The participants then made their way across the Hocking River and up to Radar Hill, where they had to locate five points from a map, and complete four challenges: a grenade-throwing course, knot tying, crossing a rope bridge and simulating a medical evacuation — all of this while walking on hilly terrain with more than 35 pounds of gear.
“The swim and the ruck march are both tiring,” James Fraley, a junior at OU, said. “But walking up and down those hills after you’ve already walked six miles, just keeping yourself moving and motivated, that was the hardest part.”
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In the hand grenade assault course, the teams had to make their way to several bunkers and then toss a grenade in the proximity of dummies. The knot-tying challenge gave cadets one minute per knot, and they had to tie eight knots total. For the last knot they were given 90 seconds. The rope bridge required the two teammates to secure a rope over a ditch and for one member to rappel across. Finally, the medical evacuation challenge had the cadets find an injured soldier, stabilize his condition, escort him out of the forest and then use a radio to call for assistance.
After all of that, the cadets made their way back to Peden to finish the challenge. At about 2 p.m., the teams began to trickle in. When their gear was put away, many dropped to the ground in exhaustion.
Miranda Stepka, a sophomore studying exercise physiology who was competing in her second Bold Warrior Challenge, said she loves competing.
“It gives you an opportunity to learn a lot of different things and the training we do is unbelievable," Stepka said. "We learn a lot more about weapons, tactical stuff, which is an area I want to work on.”
When the point totals were counted up, the winning team was Nicholas Marquard, a sophomore studying criminology, and Damon Hupp, a freshman studying biology. Both received a plaque with an axe on it and vindication for all the hard work they had put in Saturday and the training in the weeks prior.
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