Navy ROTC
By Midshipman Carrie Stinchcomb
Each semester Marine-option midshipmen complete a field training exercise that evaluates what they have learned throughout the semester. These field exercises typically include weighted conditioning hikes, obstacle course physical training, small unit leadership evaluations, and land navigation evaluation.
During the spring semester, Marine-option midshipmen travel to Marine Corps Base Quantico to conduct joint training with Marine-option midshipmen from schools along the east coast. This year’s spring training was conducted April 12-14. Midshipmen Joseph Campione and Samuel Fisher and midshipmen at the University of Virginia assisted in coordinating the effort, to include sitting in on planning conferences with the active-duty staff from other participating schools.
As the semester comes to a close, midshipmen are ramping up their summer training preparation. Each class goes through a wide variety of trainings that range from attending New Student Indoctrination (NSI) to shadowing a junior officer aboard a ship or submarine during their first-class cruise.
“Summer training has changed within the four years I’ve been here,” said Midshipman Mary Ortwein. “When I came as a freshman, we did not have any training the summer prior to our freshmen year. Now, incoming freshmen on scholarship and any upperclassmen without a scholarship must go to NSI.”
To prepare, incoming first-year students focus on Navy customs and courtesies to understand how to properly conduct themselves on ships over the summer. Rising sophomores prepare for an educational cruise known as CORTRAMID. These upperclassmen experience the different warfare communities firsthand and learn essential damage control skills to prepare them for the fleet. During their junior and senior years, midshipmen shadow enlisted sailors and junior officers. NROTC’s ProLab, a class that all midshipmen take at Virginia Tech, offers the opportunity to improve leadership competency, fleet knowledge, and learn from officers’ experiences. This summer, rising senior Marine-option midshipmen will attend Officer Candidate School (OCS).
“Officer Candidate School is a screening process to see if candidates have what it takes to be a Marine Corps officer, and a huge part of that is the candidate’s ability to communicate, decide, and act under pressure. Raider Company trains its members early on to be able to meet these criteria by putting Raiders in difficult situations where they need to think on their feet and lead while dealing with the friction instilled by the first-class midshipmen. By the time Raiders become second-class midshipmen, they become experts on this way of thinking and leading through trial and error, and their pre-OCS training becomes focused on key wickets they must master to be successful at OCS. First-class midshipmen are tasked with creating OCS prep sessions to review information and skills that we deem most important for OCS, including drill, five paragraph operation orders, small unit leadership evaluations, rifle maintenance, and land navigation. Overall, these prep sessions are more of a review for the second-class midshipmen and an opportunity to iron out any weaknesses they may have in preparation for OCS,” said Midshipman Carcamo-Reyes, who leads second-class training. The Virginia Tech NROTC Battalion recognizes and appreciates the hard work these midshipmen have put in to better serve their country.