Photo By Robert Timmons | A University of South Carolina football player grimaces as he crawls to the finish...... read more read more
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“This will show who the natural born leaders are,” said 1st Sgt. Christopher Bolden of 1st Battalion, 61st Infantry Regiment, as his drill sergeants prepared for their next cycle pick up June 10.
It wasn’t the usual cycle. They wouldn’t being picking up their average trainee and it would prove to be extremely short – just one day – as student-athletes from the University of South Carolina got a taste of what Army training is like.
The Gamecocks football team found themselves ushered onto buses that afternoon and driven to Fort Jackson to find themselves face-to-face with intimidating drill sergeants shouting orders at them.
“This causes chaos,” said Jeff Dillman, the Gamecock’s director of football strength conditioning. “How do athletes when they play in front of 85,000 at Williams-Brice Stadium, or 100,000 fans, react to stressful situations? Do they get above or beyond the obstacle or the stress, or do they shut it down?
“What we are doing is causing stress on them now,” Dillman added. “We are going to see how they overcome the stress of drill sergeants challenging them to push, push, push.”
But that was just the beginning. The athletes would find themselves sweating in a humid Carolina evening as they carried mannequins, full ammo cans and five gallon jugs of water through a myriad of obstacles only an Army post can provide. All while each player carried a sand bag-filled assault pack.
Sgt. Ebony Jackson, a drill sergeant with Bravo Company, 1-61, was excited she could help motivate the football team.
“I played college ball five years ago, so I wish I had the opportunity to do something like this,” she said as drill sergeants and drill sergeant leaders from the U.S. Army Drill Sergeant Academy made last second preparations.
I’m looking forward to the mentorship,” Jackson said. “I can kind of relate to the USC football team as a college athlete. I remember where I was and what type of person I was then and now. I am really excited about mentoring them and getting them to understand the importance of teamwork and working together collectively as a team.”
It is going to be difficult for them, she added. If the athletes can overcome the mental aspect of their “introduction” into the Army they will do well.
“As a former college athlete I think that is going to be the toughest part of it,” said Jackson, who used to play college basketball. “Physically I think they will be able to handle it. But will they be able to handle it mentally?”
The football team leveraged Fort Jackson to help build teamwork among the players while also helping to bring out individual leadership. The installation’s variety of venues also multiplied the effects of training.
Dillman, one of the coordinators for the event, said “with only six weeks until training camp we had to be strategic with what we can and can’t do from a risk versus rewards stand point.”
“Our biggest thing Coach (Will Muschamp) talks about is effort, toughness and discipline – ETD,” Dillman said. “Our guys have great effort, you know, and their building their toughness but from the discipline standpoint and working as a team and getting rid of that selfishness out of the team. We have talked about that from day one. There are no individuals on the team; it’s all about team effort.”
Everyone has individual goals, but if you reach team goals you will reach your individual goals.”
Over the course of the night, the athletes handled the adversity with aplomb – they completed every task before them with very few exceptions and even fewer fallouts. Only one athlete stopped halfway through the Fit to Win course, but kept going, while four players declined to go through the night infiltration course.
The athletes were separated into teams, or platoons, so they would face the obstacles together. Each team had to complete each task together, with the fastest teams being rewarded with less weight to carry and longer break times.
At the halfway point through the night’s events, the student-athletes were given a short break and a pep talk from the Soldiers around them.
“When there are nine seconds left in the game and it’s tied, you are going to remember this day,” Jackson said. “This is why we are telling you guys this. We all know you can do this physically, but mentally can you get through this?”
Fort Jackson’s top Soldier also encouraged the players to push through.
“We’ve played two quarters and we have two quarters left to play,” Maj. Gen. Roger Cloutier said to the sweat-drenched and dirt-coated athletes. “Now is where it gets real. Now is where things get hard. Now we have to work together – it pays to be a winner.”
“I tell the guys all the time, ‘Everybody wants to know what winners do,’” Dillman said. “So if you have the dream to be in the NFL and play in the NFL, I have seen teams that are winners that have many guys drafted into the NFL. And I have seen guys that are losers that don’t have any guys drafted into the NFL.”
In the wee hours of the morning after having a hearty midnight dinner, the Gamecocks’ head coach Muschamp recognized the event built leadership, but also “showed appreciation to what the military does.”
Cloutier summed up the event when he said the difficulty of what the players went through will build them up.
“We believe that stress does not build character. We believe stress reveals character.”
If Dillman is correct the team should go far.
“If they build a team together, and they build a camaraderie together as one heartbeat, one team, it will take them a long way,” he said.
| Date Taken: | 06.16.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 01.26.2017 15:42 |
| Story ID: | 221541 |
| Location: | FORT JACKSON, SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 51 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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