Tennessee hosted the Army National Guard Best Warrior Competition on the last week of July.
The competition is an annual event in which National Guard soldiers from across the country have to compete hard in preliminary competitions just to reach. The competition involves various fitness training, field exercise and combat scenarios.
Units across all 54 U.S. states and territories compete yearly in the Best Warrior Competition with 14 National Guard soldiers chosen to compete in the finals.
“It’s like March Madness for the Army,” said Lt. Col. Darrin Haas, with the Tennessee National Guard Public Affairs Office.
This marks the first time that Tennessee has hosted the Best Warrior Competition. The competitors will travel all over the state, but the contest is based out of Smyrna.
Middle Tennessee State University was chosen as one of the sites for the competition because of the swimming and exercise facility that the school recreation center has to offer.
Last year’s winner of the Best Warrior competition, Sgt. Cole Lukens (pictured), is a current MTSU student and involved full-time with the Army National Guard.
Lukens, 23, is a part-time student studying finance; he usually only takes three to nine credit hours per semester. The National Guard is paying for his schooling.
“The best part is probably the comradery, being able to develop and sharpen your skills with the best NCOs and soldiers in the National Guard,” Lukens recalled of last year’s competition, hosted in Arizona.
Lukens plans to attend Army Ranger school next spring.
The competition this year will take place in several venues over the course of a week. Following the Murfreesboro stop, competing soldiers traveled to do weapons, vehicle and survival training in Tullahoma and Milan, Tennessee.
“Tennessee hosting this competition means that we get to showcase all the things that we have to offer, like MTSU and all the facilities that the National Guard uses here in the state,” said Senior Enlisted Leader Ken Simmons with the Tennessee Air National Guard. Simmons has been with the Air National Guard for over 40 years and regularly attends the Best Warrior Competitions.
Tennessee State Command Sgt. Maj. Dale Crockett has helped energize the Best Warrior program and helped get Tennessee on the radar for hosting the national event.
“The competitions are pretty similar wherever it’s hosted, but this year we are giving it some Tennessee flavor,” said Crockett while watching the soldiers competing in swimming contests.
On the first day of actual competition, on July 25, exercises involved several types of cardio challenges including an endurance running test dubbed “the beep test” as well as several types of swimming tests. The swimming sections featured everything from endurance swimming to diving exercises, where soldiers dove for rifles at the bottom of the 12-feet-deep pool.
The soldiers had to swim in full uniform with rifles and flak jackets to test their endurance in water scenarios.
Throughout the rest of the week, the competing soldiers will test in weapons training with small arms, practice survival skills in the Tennessee wilderness, and practice combat exercises like breaching rooms and clearing buildings.
According to Lt. Col. Haas, Guard members and civilians in Tennessee have been prepping for this event all year and many are proud to host this event for the first time in the state.
A scoring system is used to track each soldier competing and by the end of the week-long contest, a winner is determined and named Best Warrior.
