Cadets at Fishburne Military School are in week two of a five-week summer session, and on Wednesday after they were done in the classroom, it was time for some Rangers training.
One by one, over the course of two hours on a sweltering afternoon, the cadets were given training in rappelling from the roof of the main building on campus and propelling themselves across a ropes course.
“They get a similar experience as to what they are asked to do in the course of the school year. There’s the academic portion, the athletics and the Rangers training,” said Lt. Col. Robert Hunt, the Senior Army Instructor in the Junior ROTC program at Fishburne.
Cadets get one day of Rangers training each week in the summer program at Fishburne, after school on Wednesdays. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, cadets are required to participate in an extracurricular athletics activity.
This summer, cadets can participate in a football camp, basketball camp and soccer camp, Hunt said.
This is on top of the intensive classroom instruction. Cadets can take two repeat courses for 70 hours each, or take a new 140-hour course with the intent of getting ahead for the upcoming school year.
For summer-school cadets who intend to enroll for the full school year in the fall, there is one other advantage.
“One of the incentives for cadets who plan to return in the fall is that they are going through Rat status in the summer session, so that when they come back in the fall, they don’t have to go through that again. At the end of graduation, we put the black name tags on them, and call them Old Men, and they’re done with that when they come back in the fall,” Hunt said.
Story by Chris Graham
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