Marine Corps Training Day

On Saturday, the girls got the opportunity to train with Captain Derrick Oliver, Lt. Ellen Gleason, and Sgt. John Manching from the Marine Corps Selection Office in Newark, DE. The girls were put through the challenge of fighting both mental and physical fatigue. The staff put the girls through their combat fitness test that included three different events. The first event was a half mile run around the track in which all the girls finished in their respective times. Then, they had two minutes of lifting a 8 pound ammo cans over the head and our highest score came from  sophomore Hannah Shields in which she had 55 lifts in the two minutes. After, the girls had a “Maneuver Under Fire” drill which included a 10-yard sprint, 15-yard crawl (low then high crawl), hauling a simulated casualty(teammates) using two different carries: drag and fireman's while zigzagging through cones, sprints while carrying two 8-pound ammo cans through the same cones, throwing a dummy hand grenade(softball) into a marked circle 22.5 yards, and 5 pushups and a sprint with the ammo cans to the finish line. The last event with the Marine Corps was a leadership course where one player had to get their team through  many obstacles and find a way to strategically get all their teammates out alive. According to senior Khaliyah Flournory, she learned that “when a gifted team dedicates themselves to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, they are on the right track to attain success”.  The theme that all the players and coaches took from the experience and are going to focus on throughout the year were these five words: Loyalty, Dependability, Unselfishness, Decisiveness, and Mental and Physical Endurance. As you can tell, we learned a lot of things and the players learned a lot about each other but sophomore Jalen Wicher put it best, “I learned that no matter the circumstances my teammates will always provide the support I need to push through the challenging times both on the field and off”.  This experience was a great experience for our girls. Check out thefull video of the day at this link: https://youtu.be/y1jmLqxWa0A

I learned that my body is way stronger than my mind. And I was able to push myself to the limit with the encouragement from my team. -Senior Mika Lumsden