Congratulations to Colorado Navy ROTC for another successful invitational! Teams from across the country came to compete against each other with the special addition of Colorado Army ROTC. The event was held from Friday, March 1st to Saturday, March 2nd. However, for Colorado, the meet has been a constant effort by midshipmen of all classes since the beginning of Fall semester. Other schools also put in an immense amount of time preparing for the competition. Schools that attended included Ohio State, Nebraska, Berkeley, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arizona, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado Army ROTC, and Colorado Navy ROTC.
Teams this year competed in seven events: Squad Drill, Platoon Drill, Color Guard, Rifle, Pistol, an Endurance Race, and Knowledge Competition. First in each event were as follows: Oklahoma won both Squad Drill and Platoon Drill, Colorado won both Color Guard and the Endurance Race, Kansas won Rifle, Minnesota won Pistol, and finally, Berkeley won the Knowledge Competition. For the overall meet, Colorado took first, Oklahoma took second, and Kansas took third.
Colorado would like to extend their gratitude to each team for not only making the trip-but for putting in the effort to create strong, healthy competition between each unit. This meet not only provided a great opportunity for each school to show their dedication to the competition, but also allowed midshipmen to come together to make new friends and connect with old friends from summer cruise. We hope to see these schools and new ones come to the meet next year to provide even more competition, another opportunity to connect with midshipmen across the country, and show each other the pride we have for our schools.
Now, a word from the meet OIC, MIDN 2/C McLaren:
It truly was an incredible experience getting to bring over 300 Midshipmen together to create an event of this scale. This team met every week since September to plan, write LOIs, and work through the logistics in order to accomplish our mission to instill pride in Midshipmen for their service, establish camaraderie between the Midshipmen from other schools, and promote Esprit de Corps. Being an all hands event, it was great getting to see how each midshipman was integral to making the event a success. The most rewarding part of the event, however, was watching this planning team come together and develop their creative problem-solving skills. Each OIC/AOIC team wrote the LOIs from scratch and brought something to their event that the Colorado Meet has not seen before. In the Endurance Race, MIDN McClain and MIDN Hein created a brand-new course with new stations from previous years. In drill, we saw MIDN Lee and MIDN Bonilla implement the “Individual Drill” portion of the event, which tested each Midshipman on his or her bearing, quick thinking, and confidence. For the Shooting Competition, MIDN Bennet and MIDN Mita decided to have midshipmen be required to pick between rifle and pistol in order to give more students a chance to participate, and we brought in brand new weapons to shoot. Finally, completely new this year was the Knowledge Competition. MIDN Conroy nd MIDN Vanlangendonck planned this entire event from nothing and pulled off one of the most exciting events the meet has ever seen. Together with the help of Hospitality OIC MIDN Morrissey and AOICs MIDN Stetz, MIDN Osteen, and SSGT Jackson, this team put together an innovative and fun event that accomplished our mission.