Oklahoma Guardsmen prove to be tougher than mud

Photo By Staff Sgt. Anthony Jones | Soldiers of the 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team cross the finish line of the Thunder Mudder obstacle course at Camp Gruber, near Braggs Okla., Sept. 12. Thunder Mudder is a nine-mile long obstacle course with 17 obstacles designed to challenge Guardsmen's strength, endurance and ability to work as a team.  

OK, UNITED STATES

09.12.2015

Courtesy Story

45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team

By Pfc. Brianna Rhodes

OKLAHOMA - More than 470 Oklahoma Army National Guard Soldiers participated in the first-ever Thunder Mudder at Camp Gruber, near Braggs, Oklahoma, Sept. 12.

Soldiers of the 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team maneuvered their way through 17 muddy obstacles including a confidence tower, tire flips and an incline wall during the 9-mile course.

The competitive event was a team building exercise designed for Soldiers to have fun and motivate each other, said Capt. Cristine Winchester, a Norman, Oklahoma, resident and the officer in charge of the event.

“Teamwork is really important, especially for unit readiness,” Winchester said. “It inspires rapport, it doesn’t force rapport.”

The event was broken into four heats, with multiple waves of teams starting in 3-minute intervals. The second and third heats were competitive heats with teams of seven Soldiers each vying for the fastest time.

Teams from the 1st Battalion, 179th Infantry, swept the competition, taking first, second and third place. The first place team finished in less than two hours with a time of 1:59:56.

“It was very difficult,” said Spc. Blake Patterson, a military policeman for Headquarters Company, 45th Brigade Special Troops Battalion, and a native of Hulbert, Oklahoma. “Everybody had to work together to get it done. It was more of a team event rather than individual.”

The two obstacles Soldiers said were the toughest to complete were the mile of mud and an arctic ice slide. The mile of mud is a series of slick, muddy inclines punctuated by pits of water, which made the inclines nearly impossible to climb without teamwork. The arctic ice slide challenged Soldiers to slide into a large pit of mud and ice.

According to Winchester, the event took more than 15 months to plan because of the environmental and safety requirement the Brigade had to satisfy before the event could take place, but it turned out to be a great success.

“There’s a lot of people involved,” Winchester said. “We had to coordinate with the state environmental and safety office, as well as coordination with Camp Gruber to dig up and put mud on their land.”

The months of planning and the people involved are what made the event successful, she said.

“The success is due to good, solid noncommissioned officers,” Winchester said. “It went really well. Every time I talked to a team, they looked muddy and happy.”

• Date Taken: 09.12.2015
• Date Posted: 09.15.2015 08:39
• Story ID: 176041
• Location: OK, US
• Hometown: EDMOND, OK, US
• Hometown: HULBERT, OK, US
• Hometown: MOORE, OK, US
• Hometown: NORMAN, OK, US
• Hometown: OKLAHOMA CITY, OK, US