The New River Valley Ruck 4 Life: An Annual Stop Soldier Suicide Campus Ruck Challenge

By Cadet Daniel Alumbaugh '26 

The Beginning

Isabelle Lee '25, Avery Brown '25, and Jon Prevete ’25 discovered a post in October 2022 promoting a 50-mile ruck challenge in November of that year. The account responsible for the post: Stop Soldier Suicide, a group created to raise awareness for solider suicide.  

“We started to post our rucks and pages that we made to raise money on our Instagram and Strava accounts–very unofficial, very informal, yet, with pure tenacity and intentionality. We truly didn’t know what we were doing, but we knew where we wanted to go and what we wanted to accomplish: to create a massive movement to join the community together to fight a systemic issue which we all are a part of, yet many are unaware of,” said Prevete.

The three would finish classes and other obligations for the day to ruck 3-5 miles with each other. The effort gradually expanded to other cadets and civilians who wanted to support the movement.  

“This catalyzed Stop Soldier Suicide to name Virginia Tech as the founding team the following year to spearhead the national challenge which began to incorporate many other ROTCs and senior military colleges across the nation to compete against one another to fundraise through this Ruck for Life campaign,” said Prevete.

The 2022 team raised over $8,000, the largest amount from any single team in Stop Soldier Suicide history. Their success directly inspired Stop Soldier Suicide to launch the annual Campus Ruck Challenge. With the launch of the Campus Ruck Challenge in 2023, Prevete, Brown, amd Lee continued to organize and lead the Campus Ruck Challenge until 2024.

The 2025 Drive

Cadet Iain Fergusson and I worked to develop a plan once the fall 2025 semester started. By early September, we met over Zoom with two Stop Soldier Suicide directors, Ashley Ege (National Fundraising Events) and Hayley Emerson (Campus Ruck) to refine our ideas for this year’s mission: a 15K ruck in November to mark Stop Soldier Suicide’s 15th year.

From the beginning, we envisioned $50,000 raised, hundreds of participants, and a crowd cheering finishers across the line. We soon learned that coordinating an event like this was much harder than we had thought. It started with endless paperwork and ended with us redrawing our route a month before the event. But with the help and support of our cadre, especially Master Sgt. Embler and Lt. Col. Lee from Army ROTC, and our vice commandant, Brig. Gen. Alia, we conquered all the obstacles that came our way.

Bringing the Valley Together  

We wanted participation from across the New River Valley, and not just from Virginia Tech. We advertised at local businesses, reached out to high schools and posted flyers across campus to bring the community together.  

The Ruck

We had 158 participants and more than 553 volunteer hours. Special guests included Ashley Ege, Caitlyn Scaggs, who serves as the Stop Soldier Suicide director of marketing and communications, and Instagram influencer Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Ham, who Caitlyn coordinated with. At the time, Ham was a Ranger School instructor. After the ruck, we gave him a tour of Virginia Tech, and he loved our campus and learning about the history and traditions of our Corps.  

Our fundraiser ended with $25,041 raised through 394 donations. While $50,000 was ambitious, we still shattered fundraising records. Our fundraiser made up over one third of the nationwide fundraiser, which raised over $65,000!  

Passing the Torch

This year’s ruck in November will be organized by cadets Iain Fergusson, Calvin Seithel, and Sean McLaughlin. We plan to shatter the records yet again, and we would love for you to be involved! Follow our Instagram “nrv.ruck4life” to stay updated on this year's challenge!  

We hope you join us in combatting this mission-critical crisis that is suicide.