The Army ROTC took a trip to Camp Seminole Friday afternoon to spend the weekend to enhance their leadership abilities, Cadet Capt. Jason Scott said. This fall field training exercise is known as an FLRC (field leadership reaction course), and approximately 30 soldiers attended this exercise, Cadet Capt. Herbet Rhoades said.
Some of the training consisted of day and night land navigation and an obstacle course. During land navigation, soldiers pair off and find plotted points in the forest with compasses in an allotted amount of time.
The obstacle course consisted of six different obstacles. The soldiers broke up into four separate squads, and each squad was given a certain amount of time to properly negotiate each obstacle.
“The purpose of the obstacle negotiation is to see if squad leaders can maintain control of their squads. We have to plan everything and the Cadre just oversee the process,” Rhoades said.
Rhoades added that FLRCs provide a chance for soldiers to learn how to function in a real life combat situation.
The soldiers returned to campus around 10 a.m. Sunday morning, when they began to prepare for another week of class, ROTC labs and physical training.
“You get up around 5:30 in the morning, and you don’t get done until about 4:00 in the afternoon,” Rhoades said.
According to Cadet Lt. Colonel Mark Battise, physical training starts at 6 a.m. and lasts until 7 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”
“On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, we play some type of sport,” Rhoades said.
“It’s just as hard to be an ROTC soldier as it is to be a student athlete,” former football coach Maj. Danny Blanton said.
Blanton, of the 102nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment in Jackson, said he would like to see the soldiers get the same respect as student athletes as well.
MSU’s Army ROTC program has 97 members, but Rhoades said, “Only about 30 soldiers are contracted right now. That means they have actually signed up for a four-year full-time enlistment or six years in the Army Reserve or National Guard.”
For more information about MSU ROTC, visit the first floor of Middleton Hall or call 325-3503.