Canada Claims Sandhurst 2016 Crown

Sandhurst 2016, the 49th iteration of West Point’s annual military skills competition, was grueling in every aspect of the word. Sixty-one 9-person teams—comprised of USMA’s cadet companies, ROTC’s eight brigades, squads from three sister academics, and 12 international teams—endured a brutal route (totaling 30.8 miles), demanding challenges (including, for the first time ever, two night events), and cold and blustery weather (barely pushing 40-degrees Fahrenheit with winds blowing more than 20 MPH at times) over the course of two days at West Point. Given those conditions, it is perhaps not surprising that West Point’s neighbor to the north, the Royal Military College of Canada, won Sandhurst 2016, marking the fifth time it took home the Reginald E. Johnson Memorial Plaque (a mounted cadet sabre) as the competition’s highest scoring squad (2005-07, ’09). For the fourth year in a row, H-3 earned the 1st Place USCC Streamer as the highest scoring cadet company, and 4th Regiment dethroned 2nd Regiment and won the Sandhurst Sword as the regiment with the best aggregate company performance in the competition. The sword was originally presented to USMA by the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst (UK) in 1967 to be a prize for a regimental military stakes competition, the aim of which was to promote military excellence among the Corps of Cadets. At first, West Point’s Sandhurst Competition was just a mix of physical fitness tests, varsity and intramural sports, and drill and ceremony performed over the course of an academic term; however, in 1975, Major Robert Hodges, the British exchange officer assigned to West Point at the time, worked with the Commandant to re-format the competition to test the cadets’ ability to “shoot, move and communicate” as a team. The competition was moved to Camp Buckner and took place over the course of 20 days in April. Beginning in 1992, the competition was reduced to two days and opened to ROTC squads, and two teams from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst began participating a year later, one of which won the event for ten years straight. In 2011, USCC Company B-3 became the one and only USMA squad to win the competition since international competition began, a fact that West Point fans hope will change next year with the 50th anniversary of Sandhurst.