UVU’s ROTC Ranger Challenge team took first place at the regional competition in Fort Collins, Colorado in October, 2018. Then they competed at the 5^th Brigade competition in San Antonio, Texas, and took first at that competition in November. The team has its sights on winning the global competition at West Point, New York in April.

Ranger Challenge is the varsity sport of the ROTC. The competition consists of events that teams complete together. Events can vary, but the challenge can include a ruck march, marksmanship, weapon disassembly/assembly, artillery simulation, hand-grenade assault course, fitness challenge, land navigation, night land navigation, an academic knowledge-based test, artillery simulation, evaluation of a casualty, and others. Students try-out for the team and once selected, they train together 5-6 days a week.

The team shared their experience of the two previous competitions, as well as how they’re preparing for West Point. Team members featured in this interview are Gwynyth (Gwyn) Simons—team captain, Joshua Peles, Sydney Garner, Joseph Lloyd, Josh Butikofer, Cooper Wimmer, Gilbert Burns. Not featured are Travis Hall, Hyrum Ahlman, Tyler Miner, Austin Slade, and Ashton Winslow—a BYU student. Faculty advisers include Colonel Toby Adamson, Captain Grant Stark, and Captain Sam Ganoe.

Interviewer: How was the regional competition in Colorado?

Gwyn Simons: Going into it, there was a lot of doubt about our team because a lot of people who have done this in past years didn’t do it this year. It was a new team. We have never won before, so a lot of people doubted us, but we went and won the first competition. We all put in so many hours to go and compete. It’s a hard balance because we try to work out every single morning, and we work on skills, and we do rucks on Saturdays, and it’s this hard balance of not overdoing it so that no one gets injured, and  at the same time getting to your peak shape for this competition which uses everything physically and mentally.

Joshua Peles: Colorado sucked! When we won, there was a two-second thing of nostalgia where we were like “YES!” and then, “Ugh, we have to do this again.” It was just really long. I was recording the distance on my watch; we did that whole day—with bricks about 38 miles total just moving. Our bodies hurt; we were tired. I personally didn’t even go to the award ceremony because I was like, “I don’t care.” [laughter] I slept through it.

Cooper Wimmer: The first competition was way hard. It was taxing mentally, physically, and we finished it, and Peles was like, “We lost, I’m so sure we lost.” And that night they were like, “You guys won it.”

Peles: We were all just so tired, and it didn’t occur to me that every team was beat down. We were moving really slow at the end, so I was just kind of angry-walking, and the team kept yelling “slow down, slow down,” and I’d look back and I’d just be mad.

Simons: We had our last five miles, and every single step hurt. It was hard.

Interviewer: You’re not updated on your ranking throughout the competition?

Gilbert Burns: Welcome to the army. [laughter]

Peles: Our cadre would come up to us and say we were crushing it, or that we were making great time, but we never knew our placement officially.

Sydney Garner: And they started everyone staggered too, so the first group started at 7 p.m. There was a huge time gap for nighttime nav. They started us at 1 a.m.

Wimmer: You know you’re doing pretty well when you’re passing people that started hours before you. That’s when some of us were like, “I think we’re doing okay because we’re passing people that started hours ago.”

Simons: Land navigation was the first event, and we finished that, and then we started our first ruck movement—it was eight miles to our rest place—and we passed three teams on the road.

Peles: We pretty much won because of the first event. We were the last group to start. We were the third overall group done, so we passed 13 groups before they finished. The second place team was an hour behind us, and the third place was three hours behind us.

Burns: Overall, for the first competition, the thing that won it for us was being able to suck it up and just do it.

Peles: It was our team cohesion. I’ve been here for 10 years. I’ve never been with a group where there are no rifts. There’s no little gaps; we just work well together. It’s been amazing. Both events we’ve gone to, we are the oddball team. All the other teams are doing their thing, like they dress the right dress, and then there’s us. [laughter] No one thought we’d even stand a chance, but we just mesh really well. You can see the other teams have their gaps, cliques, and are upset for one reason or another, but we don’t have that.

Burns: That team cohesion was so important for the mental, grueling part of it because you don’t really know your place. Especially in the second competition, if we did poorly in an event, it was nice to have a positive team attitude, so you don’t get down because you assume you’ve just hit last place or something.

Interviewer: What’s the secret to your team cohesion?

Wimmer: It’s like what Gwyn was saying earlier. We started building our team, and we have a lot of these people that we call “high speed,” who thought they knew what this team was going to be. Those people lost motivation to come or got hurt, or just weren’t into it anymore, and those who were left were the people that stuck it out. We’re different shapes, sizes, colors, and you go and look at other teams, and they look the same, and that’s where we’re really strong. We’re a team of individuals. Each of us have            strengths and weaknesses, and because each of us are so different, we blend well.

Burns: I think a lot of the guys who started it and didn’t end up going to the competitions for one reason or another, they already knew that they were competent in their military skills and in their general fitness. For most of us coming in, we felt like we had to prove ourselves, and so I feel like it helps to motivate you on an individual basis. On top of that, you don’t have that pride of overconfidence holding you back. When no one has that, we’re able to play off of each other’s strengths.

Peles: Everyone on this team is self-aware. They know where they’re strong, they know where they’re weak, and there’s no pride to get in the way. If we have to switch somebody out for a reason, then we do it.

Simons: As team captain, I wanted the people that committed the time to be on the team. It was the best people who also committed the time to come to the practices. We put in hours every morning, and skills sometimes on Tuesdays, and shooting on Tuesdays, and it was a lot of hours. I wasn’t going to let someone who might be just as competent in the skills but didn’t come to anything be on the team. I think that made a big difference in the team cohesion. We had been doing everything together for two months by competition time. Everyone got along really well.

Wimmer: And we’re friends! That’s a big part of it.

Simons: We had a team party and everyone came. It was right before the second competition.

Wimmer: We do stuff even outside the realm of army, and that makes a difference.

Interviewer: What’s your role as team captain?

Simons: There’s 11 people on the team, and a squad is usually composed of nine people. At each event, nine people have to compete. Two people are alternates. At the first competition, I could choose at each event which two people would be my alternates. At the second competition, once an alternate was switched in, they couldn’t switch again. At West Point, it will be more like the first competition. I’ll be able to choose at every event who my two alternates will be and the amount of notes I have on my phone about who’s good at what is ridiculous! I have to keep track of who’s doing the best at which event, and I ask my team. They answer very honestly, “Okay maybe this isn’t my best event,” and “I’m very strong at these events,” and I take notes of all of that. That’s something that I worked on during the competition. I wrote everything down in a tiny notebook so that I knew at each event who my two people that weren’t the strongest at that event were, and I’d have them sit out. No one was upset about it, and it worked out really well. We were able to utilize strengths in most events.

Interviewer: Who did you compete against in Colorado?

Peles: Our big competitors were Colorado State and Brigham Young University.

Simons: Brigham Young University was supposed to be one of our big competitors, but they messed up on one of the events and that messed up their time.

Wimmer: The schools involved were the U of U, BYU, SUU, Weber, Utah State, all Colorado schools, and all Wyoming schools.

Peles: For the first competition it was all Utah, all Wyoming, and all Colorado schools that have ROTC programs.

Burns: But the real competition was UC Boulder.

Peles: UC Boulder was the team that came in second. Colorado State came in right behind them.

Wimmer: Our cadre like to say that we’re the only varsity sport that UVU has that can beat other varsity sports in Utah, so I like that. [laughter]

Simons: I don’t know if that’s true, but I like that.

Wimmer: I know our varsity sport is way different, but they like to say it.

Interviewer: Tell me about the competition in Texas.

Wimmer: Colorado was way tougher physically and mentally, and in Texas it required a lot more strategy. It was pretty tactical. Each event has requirements and penalties involved, so if you know the penalties, you can game it. That’s where knowledge from each of us came into play. We were all thinking about how we could accomplish the mission the best way, and even if we suffer some penalties, how we could suffer the least. That was way different.

Simons: We were given the operation order after the first competition, and everyone read it. Peles, Winslow—a BYU cadet that came with us—and myself studied that thing up and down. It was 34 pages—it was a lot. It laid out every single event and what the requirements were going to be, and we looked for loopholes. We read it over and over again and discussed it as a team. “How are we going to do this? Is it even worth doing this part of the event if it’s going to take this much time?” That was a big part of it. One of the events was the obstacle course, and there are certain parts that are pretty easy, but then there are parts—especially for me—that are really difficult. I couldn’t do this one called the weaver, and it wasn’t worth me attempting it and going super slow. We ended up killing that event because we strategized it so much.

Wimmer: We were 10 minutes ahead. We finished, and they told us that the next best team was at 30 minutes while we were at 22 or something. Something else, the Mountain West regional—there’s the regional and then the brigade level—at the regional, the competition was pretty intense. I personally believe that anyone who would’ve won our regional, if it wasn’t us, would’ve won the brigade competition. We showed up and expected tough competition and went into it strong, but I think the level of competition wasn’t as high as at regionals. We showed up and the first event was the P.T. (physical training) test, and every team at this point in the competition gets some cool gear. You get some cool swag, so we had these cool jackets that we got. We show up for this P.T. test, and we’re in normal Army P.T.’s, and every other team is swagged out with shirts and shorts, and we’re standing there definitely looking like that team that didn’t get cool gear. We’re in our normal stuff, but we went out and destroyed the test. It’s super sick because Gwyn is not only the first Ranger Challenge female captain ever to win, but when they called all the captains up, it was all guys and her. When she came up, all the other ranger challenge captains were shorter than her too. [laughter] It was way sick because they all go up there and she’s the tallest and the only female, it was sick!

Peles: One of the best things at both competitions was halfway through you could hear other cadre say, “Who’s UVU?” They kept getting our name wrong and putting us as different stuff because no one knew who UVU was.

Simons: “U of U, BYU?” and we’re like, “No, we’re UVU.”

Peles: That became a theme as soon as we started crushing it, “Who’s UVU?”

Burns: I feel like we’re that oddball team that came out of nowhere and won, and then won again. And we’re going to do really well at this next one we’re going to. It just built our confidence that no one knows who we are and we came in and dominated. It was just really cool to me.

Wimmer: That first P.T. test I was talking about, we really set the tone there because we had four runners in the top ten to finish the two-mile—it’s a race that’s part of our P.T. test. We killed it in running. Even at the last event, the land-nav, we’re sitting there in a group, and all the other teams are around us, and we’re just singing Disney songs [laughter] and laughing so loud, and every other team is just quiet and staring at us. It felt like other teams thought they were better than us.

Peles: In the last event, every second you go over your time, it incurs a huge penalty.

Simons: It destroys you!

Peles: In night land-navigation, they only give you an hour which is not a lot for a land navigation course. The average Army land navigation course is six hours, and they have 14 points scattered which is ridiculous! They don’t expect you to find more than three, but they’re like, “Go and be strategic.” And we’re like “what points can we find that are closer,” and you gotta find them. There were groups out there, like Tarleton—who we refer to as our Cobra Kai, because they were all blacked out, they never smiled, they were rude to everyone—but they came with three points and time to spare. They came in like, “Yeah we won, we won.” We had to sacrifice a lot of time to find extra points, and we found five points. Nobody found more than three, and we came in at 59 minutes and 52 seconds. At 60 minutes and 1 second, we would’ve started incurring a penalty. We came in with eight seconds to spare.

Simons: It was a crazy run back to the checkpoint.

Josh Butikofer: We were hauling so fast.

Wimmer: We lost Buti for a while!

Butikofer: I got lost. I got stuck in all these thorns, and I had to bust out of there, and I was like “UVU!” calling for them, and they were like, “Buti get your butt over here!”

Simons: We had this sergeant that was yelling, “Shut up! Quit talking; it’s supposed to be tactical!” And we’re frantically yelling “Buti, Buti!” [laughter]

Peles: We were the team that stood out as the weirdos because we weren’t like everybody else. We were just doing our thing.

Simons: And people were getting stuck on barbed wire! There’s barbed wire out there, and it’s so thick and dense, and when you run you have to high step so you don’t trip on things.

Butikofer: You can’t see anything, you have no light. I’m just running hoping my foot doesn’t catch a rock.

Interviewer: To a civilian, singing Disney song doesn’t sound like typical Army practice, so I’m assuming when you talk about being the oddballs that singing is something pretty—

Peles: Unusual. [laughter]

Wimmer: We’re high-spirited!

Peles: Everybody else was just so serious.

Garner: We weren’t just singing Disney. There was some Elvis in there.

Interviewer: Do you feel like that helped you?

Buitikofer: I feel like it loosened us up.

Simons: We have fun with the competition. A lot of people get so caught up in the seriousness of it, and I probably was the one that was the most stressed out because I want to win so badly. I mean everyone wants to win so badly, but I really get caught up in it. But then the team starts singing Disney songs, and it’s like “alright, we’re just having fun.” If we win or lose we’re having fun, and that makes a big difference because some of the teams would not even smile or talk to each other, they were just frustrated. We never let ourselves get to that point even though it was stressful. We did the six-mile ruck, which was one of the first events, and we were trying to haul to win the event because we knew we were good at rucking. During the event we were getting stressed out because we were trying to switch my ruck to other teammates who were holding it so that we could go faster, but in the end, everyone was still really happy with each other. After some of the stressful events we were still fine with each other.

Wimmer: I think a big part of it is that we’re super comfortable around each other, and in a high-stress environment. Singing Disney songs and joking with each other is how we train, but we’re also doing crazy hard stuff when we train. We’ll get dropped off at the mouth of Provo Canyon with 48-pound rucksacks, and we have to run to UVU in the morning. Our training is intense, and if we’re joking and singing then, when the competition comes it’s just natural.

Joseph Lloyd: Little stuff like that keeps us out of our own heads.

Peles: We’re having fun. We’re not doing this because we want to be the best, we’re having fun—other than me at the end of the first competition. I was just angry. [laughter] But I’m also a lot older than the rest of them, so I get saltier easier.

Burns: In the military and in all team events, morale is one of the biggest factors. That ability that Wimmer had to—well mostly he’d start singing. We all have different things, but we do different things to keep that morale high. Like Lloyd said, to keep them out of their own head, and if you’re not thinking about it, you’ll just do it.

Peles: And you need to know that the go-to song is Mulan’s “Let Get Down to Business”. [laughter] That is the go-to song.

Interviewer: Who did you compete against in Texas? Who were the big competitors?

Peles: Tarleton was our big competition. They’re our Cobra Kai.

Interviewer: How did you all maintain a balance between training, doing school work, jobs, and personal life?

Burns: You wake up early. [laughter]

Wimmer: It’s tough. Lloyd here is going to get his first A-minus ever! [laughter]

Lloyd: I had to sacrifice the GPA for it. I had a good time; it was a lot of fun.

Wimmer: There’s definitely a balance, and each of us has to figure that out on our own. We’re on a team when it comes to Ranger Challenge stuff, and we support each other in other stuff, but for the school work you get what needs to be done and stay up later if you have to.

Burns: To wake up early and go to all the training and skills, it helps to have the team to hold you accountable. A supportive team is big factor.

Simons: It really helps doing morning training. That leaves a lot of the day open to everybody. There were days I’d wake up at 4:30 to make it to training. Early mornings take away some of your sleep but always leaves you with enough time to get what needs to be done during the day.

Interviewer: How are you preparing for West Point and who’s the main competition?

Simons: So the competition is on April 12 and 13, but we’ll get there the week before to train. We’ve been training every single day, doing morning workouts, Saturday rucks, and we’ve been balancing our load to make sure no one gets injured. Our goal has been to take the team that won the first two competitions because they earned it. We have a ton of people in the program, and a lot of them are high speed, but they didn’t earn this. West Point has what they call their “Gold Team,” which is the elite from all of West Point. The University of Northern Georgia is another big competitor. Sandhurst, the army academy in Great Britain—that’s what this event is named after. Those three teams are our biggest competition.

Peles: There are 65 teams. Fourteen are international teams, and two of them are our main competition—both from Sandhurst. There are two competition teams from West Point. They have 30 other teams they throw in there.

Simons: They send a team from every company they have at West Point. It’s a requirement since you have to participate in a sport at West Point. A lot of students choose this, so each company will have a team, but most aren’t competitive. The two Sandhurst teams are very competitive and want to win because this is based off their school. They’re pretty consistent winners of the competition. The other service academies such as Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, and so on send a team and they’re pretty competitive.

Wimmer: Internationally teams include Australia, Japan, Chile—we’re facing 16 countries.

Lloyd: We train together as a team, and lift weights at the gym. And then train on our own.

Burns: It’s a time to work on those weaknesses that we’re aware of because all of us are good at different things, but it’s time that we focus in on those weaknesses individually and as a team.

Simons: One good thing that our team does is on our Slack channel we’ll say, “I’m going to the gym, anyone can come.” We work out with each other a lot even when it’s not organized.

Wimmer: And rucking, to explain what that is because a lot of people don’t get what that is. Rucking is getting 40-pound rucksacks, like backpacks, and we’ll put in 20 miles a week… running. We run with these. That’s one thing that’s so awesome about our location at UVU is we have mountains that we can go run. We’ll start at the mouth of Provo Canyon, and we’ll run like six miles up and six miles back, and that really preps us. As far as going to Texas and facing their rucking abilities, we had an edge. The altitude, and we’re used to climbing hills.

Peles: Yeah, we ran past one team and they were like, “You guys are dogs!”

Simons: I went to West Point last year with BYU, and the last two competitions we did were hard. The first one specifically was extremely mentally and physically difficult. The second one was really strategic. And this last one, West Point, is going to be a combination of both of them. A lot of strategy goes into this. We get the op order three to four months in advance.

Wimmer: Which is the plan that says everything that we’ll be doing, and the rules.

Peles: And that’s where we find the little holes like what we can sacrifice and who’s the best at what.

Simons: We’ll read that till I have it memorized. West Point will be a whole new level of competition. It will be the most difficult thing that most people do in their Army career. It is a very hard 48 hours.

Interviewer: How are you going to maintain perspective when you get to West Point?

Wimmer: We’re going to keep it fun. Burns here is really good at dialing it back when it starts to get intense. To work well we have to jive, and then we succeed.

Peles: Our methods aren’t broke; why fix them? It’s gotten us this far; nobody saw us getting past the first round. We’re not changing it up. We’re going to enjoy this, and if we stop having fun, it’s not worth it.

Wimmer: No one has done what we’ve done at UVU. We’re killing it.

Captain Stark: The feedback we’ve gotten from cadre at other schools who have seen these cadets perform together has been, “What is it with these guys. They’re supposed to be broken off and beat up, and they’re coming in laughing and joking and ready for the next thing with a good attitude. The other teams are coming in and leaving the events just beat down, and these guys are peppy and making jokes and being funny.” And it’s the whole group, and it was noticed by the other cadres at the other schools.

Garner: I feel like I’m one of the weakest links on the team, and during the first competition I was involved a lot more as an alternate. They are so selfless, every member. I was getting dragged during the first ruck march, like literally dragged. Miner, and then Ahlman, and Peles, they were pulling me. I would hold on to the back of their ruck, and they would just go. Everyone was willing to do that. They’re all so selfless and willing to put themselves out there for the other people on the team. It’s just an amazing thing to be a part of.

Simons: In Garner’s defense, she popped her hip out of place at mile five, and she did 10 more miles with her hip hurting her. That was killer and impressive.

Interviewer: Do you think you’ll win?

Wimmer: Yes!

Peles: The only way this Cinderella story ends [laughter] is with us on top! The only goal is number one in the country—or in the top eight.

Simons: Not just in the country, number one in the world!

Butikofer: We have nothing to lose. The only person that can beat us is ourselves. We know how to put in the time, we know how to get there, and we have a good track record so far.

Peles: We have two people on the team who have been there, we know what to expect.

Wimmer: As we prepare for this next competition—obviously life changes, people get injured and stuff—and our goal is to maintain this awesome team, but six months is a long time. It’s awesome at UVU that we have such good cadets that we have other people we can pull from and we’re going to send a really solid team.

Interviewer: What’s the long-term impact of winning this competition?

Butikofer: This looks good on what’s called OML points. It’s what they evaluate us on. It’s a nationwide list that ranks each cadet from the top to the 751^st cadet in the nation. Competing in this and performing well in this counts for points towards our standing on that list. The reason I started this and wanted to be on the team was because of that. It looks good. I’ve never been part of a team that’s won. I’ve never been able to work this hard mentally, physically, and sometimes it’s emotionally hard. For me, it’s not just for the accolades. It’s to be a part of a team like this and have that experience. Take the habits that I learn from this and apply it throughout my whole career in the army or whatever I do after.

Simons: Another thing is we have a lot of people that do want to go be real rangers and go infantry. Not that this is a comparison to what they’ll go through every day for ranger school—which is like this but every day for several months—but it is good preparation for that. In the program, there’s no other team that’s doing this much training, so in the end, this does prepare them for what they could be doing in their future careers.

Burns: After all is said and done, the purpose of the Army is to fight and win our nation’s wars. I think as cadets our options are limited, but I feel like this is our best way to prepare to be able to do that later on.

Wimmer: I agree. This experience benefits every party involved. It benefits us the most, but it benefits our program as well as this school a lot. BYU has had a tradition of winning this, and it’s pretty cool to say UVU won ROTC Ranger Challenge. That’s a big deal. Among the circles of people in my life, I can say, “Hey, did you hear that UVU won?” I think that’s something I haven’t been used to hearing. UVU won Ranger Challenge for the first time ever. This is big. That’s what stands out in my mind, and years from now it will be cool that I was a part of it. Winning this competition won’t influence my every day, but I think that UVU winning the Ranger Challenge will always be a fantastic memory. It’s not just a win for us; it’s a win for UVU.