Every fall, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Navy ROTC battalion hosts the annual Fall Invitational Drill Meet.

NROTC units from across the country are welcome to attend in hopes of displaying and exceeding excellence in events that prove their ability.

These events include a Squad and Platoon Drill competition, a Color Guard competition, an Urban Adventure race and a shooting competition.

Iowa State’s Navy ROTC and Marine Option left for the event at 5 a.m. Oct. 23, even though they typically only go to the drill meetings happening in the Spring.

“This is the first time we’ve done one this semester,” said Dillon Hansen, junior in interdisciplinary studies. “First semester, with the incoming freshman coming in, it’s kind of a challenge to train all of the freshman in drill really quickly and get them ready to compete.”

Nonetheless, the 36 ISU midshipmen won second place in the Platoon Drill, second and third place in the Squad Drill, third place in Color Guard, fourth place in shooting and third place overall. The winner of the meet was Miami University from Ohio.

“I felt we took the right steps to progress our freshman from having no drill experience to being able to bring home awards. It was good,” Hansen said.

Arriving in Wisconsin early on Friday afternoon, midshipmen who weren’t participating in the shooting competition got to explore Madison and the University.

One of Hansen’s most memorable moments from the weekend, besides winning the awards, was trying some of the local food and exploring the town with his fellow midshipmen.

Hansen recalled that Mickey’s, a “local favorite”, was the best breakfast food that he had ever had.

The next morning the midshipmen had to take on a different pace. Prepping for a long day ahead of them, the endurance runners woke up at 4:30 a.m. to take on the 10.1-mile Urban Adventure race.

After a safety brief at 5:30 a.m., Iowa State’s six midshipmen were set to begin their race at 7:10 a.m. Dressed in tri-color camo pants and yellow Iowa State shirts with Cy on the back, the midshipmen participating left the starting line with a mindset to finish the race in under three hours.

“We pretty much had to carry one 40-pound bag between us for the six of us. At any given time, somebody was carrying this pack, so whoever was kind of the least tired, we’d hand the bag to them and they’d run with it,” said Samuel Kallas, junior in psychology, and team leader for the endurance run.

Along with carrying the 40-pound backpack, which is referred to as ‘ruck running,’ the racing midshipmen had to participate in a rope climb, do more than 300 pull-ups per team, 100 linked arm sit-ups, 600 scissor kicks per team, 450 dips per team and 300 diamond push ups per team, along with more physically extensive activities.

The hardest part of the run, as noted by Kallas, was carrying the 40-pound pack. By organizing who does what activity by their certain strengths, Kallas believes that the team did better as a whole.

“I think that we worked really well as a team in coordinating who was getting the pack at any given time, and I think that it’s a testament as to how well we know each other as a unit and also as an endurance team,” Kallas said.

The Urban Adventure run took ISU two hours and 58 minutes, with the fastest team getting a time of two hours and 29 minutes.

While the run was going on, the rest of the invitational meet’s events were taking place. Starting as early as 7:15 a.m,. the squad and platoon drills, along with the color guard, waited to prove themselves to the judges.

“Overall it’s the appearance of it, togetherness of it and the correctness of it,” Hansen said.

The midshipmen finished off the weekend mid-afternoon on Saturday.

“I think we were expecting to be one of the more prepared teams when we arrived. I know the drill team has been putting in a huge amount of effort towards doing well. So I think the fact that we performed up to our own standards is very satisfying to our Gunnery Sargent Harrison and the midshipmen themselves,” Kallas said.