It's Sandhurst Week at USMA! Named after the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the UK, Sandhurst is an international military skills competition that takes place over 2-3 days this weekend at West Point and nearby Camp Buckner training grounds. Campus is packed all week with teams from all over the world. There's a gigantic Chilean man sleeping on a cot in my room right now. The energy is lit and it's really cool to see so many different people coming together with a "sportsmanly" but really fierce competitive mindset. I tried to post the promo video the Army sent out but it's not on YouTube, although there are tons of little clips that individual companies recorded, etc. the UK wins almost every year, followed by one of West Point's companies (usually H3) but the Chileans are killing it at the moment and are the Latvians. Place your bets! EDIT I just found out I have a 3.6 GPA! FUCK YEAH. As a reward from my company I get to sleep in my room before noon if I have an off hour for 3 days and my room gets out of morning inspection for 3 days. YEET
My company has a terrible Sandhurst team, but it's a great daily workout so I'll probably join next semester. We have an 'elite' team that represents the whole school called USMA Black, they go out and compete overseas and stuff while regular ol' company teams just train until Sandhurst Week. A lot of demonstrating small-unit movements/tactics, various marksmanship skills, a lot of ruck marches and casualty evacuation (fake-treating casualties and then carrying them around and stuff), dragging various pieces of artillery around a few miles, and at some point a Zodiac gets picked up, carried overhead until the team reaches the lake and then paddle across the lake for some time, stuff like that. It's nothing really crazy but once you make it a competition and you're suddenly in a race, the bar really gets raised!