USU Air Force Hosts Tri-Det Competition with BYU and U of U
Utah State University hosted an annual competition held between USU, the University of Utah and the combined forces of Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University.
Each of these schools has a detachment of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC). These ROTC units train endlessly in preparation to protect this country. However, this competition was just a little bit different from their normal daily training.
Each spring, one of the three participating colleges hosts the Tri-Det competition, referring to the three AFROTC detachments that participate. The event is planned completely by the cadets. The active-duty officers attend and support their teams, but have very little to do with the organization of the event.
“This is totally voluntary for all of the cadets,” said Lieutenant Colonel Steven J. Smith, Commander of USU’s AFROTC Detachment 860. “Between the three schools, we have about 150 participants. It may be a big rivalry, as you know, but it also brings so many people together.”
The whole event was organized by USU’s very own Cadet Quinten Morgan.
Morgan and fellow detachment members chose all of the events for the day. This included a quiz bowl competition, an aircraft recognition test, tug-of-war, an engineering challenge, flight drill evaluation (FDE), ultimate Frisbee, flag football and an overall relay race. Some events were similar to the events the ROTC trains in regularly and the others were chosen to encourage athletic competition between the schools.
Each year, the events change slightly depending on who is hosting and where the competition is held, said Lieutentant Colonel Angelique Brown from U of U’s AFROTC program. Those hosting get to choose what events are held in addition to the friendly competitive events that occur every year.
Despite the competition, Smith said he is good friends with the other AFROTC commanders from both BYU and U of U.
“This is no different from competition between Air Force squadrons, only between detachments,” said Brown. “This friendly competition is indeed a comradery moment. I believe we are all type A personalities, we just lie on different parts of the spectrum.”
Cadet Brandi Bushman is majoring in math in hopes of working in the one of the Air Force’s space exploration departments. Bushman said several of the events required at least one woman participant. This encouraged many women from the four universities (or three AFROTC programs) to participate.
“Because of the number of female to male cadets, we have to work really hard. The competitions are fair, but you have to really want it,” she said.
Many women were part of both the intellectual events as well as the athletic events, she said.
“We had a lot of females on our FDE team,” she said. “That’s basically a marching competition. We are judged by timing and posture and how exact everything is.”
Within each individual event, there was a team captain. Cadet Colton Babcock and Cadet Nicholas Palmer both helped USU win the quiz bowl and the aircraft recognition test.
“All the questions were taken from a manual that all of us have to read and know specific information about,” Babcock said. “It’s about 120 pages long, so my two teammates and I each took 40 pages and just made sure we individually knew everything within those pages. We’ve been drilling each other for the last couple weeks.”
The event itself was extremely close. USU tied against BYU at 18 after 20 questions. There were five sudden-death questions. Both teams answered four correctly, and then USU barely beat out BYU by half a point on the last one.
In addition to the quiz bowl and aircraft recognition test, USU took first place in tug-of-war, the engineering challenge, and the flag football game. The USU team also placed second in ultimate frisbee and last in the flight drill evaluation contest.
Leading up to the last and deciding event, USU led by one point over BYU. The relay race contained a rucksack sprint — where the cadet ran down the field with a heavy military backpack — a wheelbarrow portion, a set number of situps and push-ups, a tire flip and a log run. It ended with a cadet sprinting around the field and across the finish line.
USU finished the relay with a time of 3:59. BYU finished just a bit faster with 3:53, which won them the overall competition trophy. As the winning team collected their prize, the USU ROTC team kept their team spirit alive with an even stronger determination to come back with the first place win for next year’s competition.
“We have a big trophy and whoever wins gets their name inscribed on it,” Bushman said. “They take it back to their school until the next Tri-Det competition.”
The competition ended with all three schools participating in 12 royal push-ups as one massive group. The first nine were counted out loud. The tenth push-up was silent, followed by one dedicated to the Air Force and one dedicated to fallen Airmen.
At the end of the day, each detachment came together and celebrated as peers and friends. Though Utah State did not bring home the trophy, the cadets loved the competition and enjoyed working together.
“We may be competing against each other, but at the end of the day we’re all one team, one fight,” Brown said.
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