Friday night at NAVOCS was for athletics. Don Cockrill remembers scenes like the one above. “I played something called ‘pushball,'” he said. “About eight guys on a team, with a huge inflated ball six-eight feet in circumference. Lots of bloody noses.”
There were less dangerous events, too. Among those we recall were mile run, basketball, tandem relays (in which you had to carry someone on your back), rope climbing, water polo, and tug-of-war.
Lenny Borg, who had some pretty good guns for upper arms, as I recall, was our ringer in the rope climb. “Each week, I had only the scantest of leads when reaching the top of the rope,” he recalled, “but somehow I could descend twice as fast as anybody else. Lucky I didn’t lose my grip and break my tailbone.”
Bob Hamilton said he “found the one event that required little effort.” He participated in pistol shooting. “We used a Colt 1911 with an ace conversion to .22. I would see others doing tug-of-war or running and was thankful for my event.” (Bob reported he later represented the Navy in an international shooting competition. We hope to learn more about that.)
(Speaking of handguns . . . I recall handling a firearm once during my entire time on active duty and it was at OCS. [I’m not talking about the neutered M-1’s we hoisted for pass-in-review. 🙂 We’ll talk about those later.] During one class, a pistol, I expect a 1911 .45, was passed around. And I think that was it. Later, in the reserves, when I served in NCIS units, I had to qualify in both handgun and rifle [M-16], as well as shotgun.)
My event was the mile run, at least until the last quarter of our time at OCS. Bill Peeters and I ran as a pair, pretty much. We chatted, which tells you we were not exerting ourselves. I think we finished tied for last each time. I’m not so proud of that, but I remember the Alfa culture at the time, especially when we were in our third quarter, being not interested in athletic success. At the end of the evening, we would hear the results and I remember joining in on the laughter when we found out Alfa had finished last or near last. Not proud of that, either.
When A6903 became the senior cohort of the company, we also received a new group of Alfas, A6906. Among the newbies was a ringer of sorts, some recall.
As Lenny reports: “Each week, Bob Hamilton had been scoring wins in pistol shooting and I had won the rope climb, but it wasn’t until an athletic new class was added that our overall performance in sports improved dramatically. Part of the reason was the addition of a ringer, a hulking Olympic volleyball player, from California, I believe. Unfortunately, he was only allowed to compete in one event. Each week, he insisted on competing in a different event. In several of the events, it was staggering how dominant he was. His performance helped inspire the rest of us to greater efforts.”
The California hulk wasn’t the only change. 🙂 I had switched from the mile run to the tandem relay. There were other Alfas about my size so two of us smaller guys were a pair in the relays.
I remember still another factor better, actually, in terms of our athletic turnaround. Don Cockrill had become company commander and he fostered a new attitude, a new culture in Alfa. I remember him encouraging us to do better. When I looked back later at those several weeks and the changes in our performances, individually and overall, I thought of it as one of the best examples of leadership I’d seen. It demonstrated, to me at least, that one could change a culture/mindset through example and exhortation.