Photo By Sgt. Juan Madrigal | Marines race to break blocks of cement in a competition to see who can free a piece of...... read more read more
Subscribe
Engineer units from across the installation participated in the celebration of their heritage and their patron St. Patrick at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, March 16. The Marine Corps Engineer School hosts a field meet every year in celebration of St. Patrick’s contribution to early engineering.
"Back in 1903 the University of Missouri would celebrate St. Patrick," said Master Sgt. Shawn Fowler, master of ceremonies for the field meet. "Essentially he would build forts and structures. We’ve adopted it because we do the same thing with our MOS between survivability, mobility, providing utilities, whatever it may be and that’s how we adopted it."
The field meet was a contest of different engineer-related tasks, and each engineer unit on base came for the chance to win the first place trophy. The first event challenged Marines to build a chariot months in advance for the field meet. Marines pulled their commanding officer around a half mile block in a race between every unit.
"Our unit put about a month and a half of work into it," said 1st Lt. Ryan Gibbs, combat engineer officer with 8th engineer support battalion. "Each year you can update it so last year we had a chariot that worked for us but we needed to make some improvements to do better this year and we actually ended up winning this year."
Other events such as finding a piece of rebar in a cement block and racing to see who can hammer in nails the fastest tested their skills as engineers, but in the end there was a tie between 8th Engineer Support Battalion and 2nd Combat Engineer Battalion. The tie was broken with a race through an obstacle. The unit with the fastest time won the trophy for the whole event.
Staff Sgt. Henry Zapata, maintenance chief for 8th ESB ran the tie-breaking race and helped 8th ESB win first place.
"I had a good time, I was able to volunteer for the O-course which was the tie breaker at the end. It put 8th ESB over 2nd CEB, so it was a good victory today," said Zapata. "The O-course is one of my favorite things to do in the Marine Corps. It’s always a challenge, and it’s always something fun to do. It didn’t really matter if we won or lost, but at the end of the day we did beat 2nd CEB so it’s bragging rights to the rest of the engineer community."
The field meet ended with units being awarded for their victories in each individual event.
"I think the events went very smooth and a lot of the units participated really well," said Fowler. "There were a few things that we could correct like any fighting hole, and I hope we have a better event next year."
| Date Taken: | 03.16.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 04.24.2017 19:23 |
| Story ID: | 231395 |
| Location: | NC, US |
| Web Views: | 29 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Building luck: 8th ESB service members win St Paddy’s field meet, by Sgt Juan Madrigal, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT