Wins Army competition
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
FORT LEONARD WOOD, M0, — A returned missionary from Arizona was part of a three-man team that recently won a national U.S. Army fitness competition for military policemen.
Following three days of grueling, sleep-depriving military tasks, Army Specialist Travis Roberts and his two teammates bested 32 other teams to claim the annual Military Police Warfighter Challenge at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
Brother Roberts is attached to the 728th Military Police Battalion at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. He joined the military last year after serving in the Bolivia Cochabamba Mission and studying international politics at BYU. He is married to fellow Arizona native Rachelle Wright Roberts.
The military police competition is one of three such national events sponsored each year by the Army; the other two involve the Rangers and the Sappers (military engineers). Brother Roberts and his teammates, Eric Mckee and David Wright, both of Ohio, trained five months for the competition.
The competition is seven events — each measuring the physical and cognitive skills required of military police officers. Working with little rest during the three days, Brother Roberts and his teammates and competitors were tested in demanding soldiering tasks such as detainee operations; a physical fitness test that included an 8.5-mile obstacle run in military gear; physical endurance and team-building obstacle courses; land navigation and firing range challenges; a written test; a water rescue exercise and a 15-mile march with loaded ruck sacks.
"After the fifth event, teams were completely exhausted," Brother Roberts wrote in an e-mail to the Church News. "Since the (first morning) no one had slept for more than an hour."
Results from each event were kept secret, so Brother Roberts and his teammates did not know they had won the event until their names were announced at an awards ceremony following the competition.
"It was an awesome experience and I am just grateful to everyone that prayed for us and supported us throughout," Brother Roberts wrote.
