The Maneuver Captains Career Course hosted its Modern Army Combatives Tournament for Class 4-10 Wednesday at Briant Wells gym, where five captains earned an Army Achievement Medal that will be presented at their graduation ceremony.
“That’s something if you become a company commander, the guys will get inspired by getting Army Achievement Medals from you or higher command,” said Andrew Robinson, winner of the light heavyweight weight class.
“It gets you in that mindset of rewarding Soldiers for good things that they do. As company commanders, when we see Soldiers do good things, we’ll remember we got rewarded and be able to reward them.”
David Trinh (lightweight), Gary Klein (welterweight), Joseph Steadman (middleweight) and Thomas Payne (heavyweight) also won first place in their respective weight classes. Each class in the MCCC holds a combatives tournament in which all captains are required to compete in. Jim Trask, MCCC small group instructor, said for most of the captains, Wednesday marked their first tournament experience.
“A lot of these guys have probably never done a tournament before,” Trask said,” so it’s good to show them this is what a tournament is and then when they get out to their units, they can implement these kind of things.” Even if officers are unfamiliar with competing in combatives tournaments, Robinson said the tournament is a great change of pace for officers in the MCCC.
“We haven’t been in the field the whole time we’ve been in this course, so getting out here and going one-on-one with somebody in a fighting situation gets guys’ adrenaline running a little bit,” he said.
The majority of the participants were only Level 1 certified combatants and the few who were Level 2 tended to fare better in the tournament. Trask said he hopes that the tournament will encourage more captains to become Level 2 certified.
“I would like to see those guys go on to Level 2 because there’s a benefit to learning how to combat somebody hand-to-hand tactically,” he said.
Experience and Level 2 certification helped Robinson, who also has a background as a high school wrestler and has competed in other combatives tournaments, win his weight class.
“Everybody here is in great shape, but if you know a little bit more than the next guy, it helps out a lot,” Robinson said.
