Athletics in military

[usmarinemike]

a few years back the MOI at my NROTC unit had been on American Gladiators back in the day. He had fought some chess pieces in his time in the Marines. I think he had been on the USMC rugby team when in a squadron.

That guy was friggin crazy. He was a -53 pilot and he was the kind of person who would not take no for an answer when he asked for something (like if he could be on All-Marine rugby). He was highly, highly narcissistic (think Alexander the Great) and he got out at 16 years(!) to go to med school at Morehouse. I wouldn't be surprised if he runs for President sometime in the next 25 years.

So yeah, there is a way to get to regularly play All-Service sports as an officer. You just gotta have the right combination of tact, panache, and machismo. Have fun with that.

 

[JDawg2332]

http://www.defenselink.mil/armedforcessports/

Good, so I can continue to play volleyball in the Corps I'll be dropping dimes in the back row :icon_smil

 

[Flash]

My experience was with the Navy and not the USMC, but there were two guys in my first squadron who did Navy sports. One of them did rugby, I have no idea how he managed to do that one, and one did soccer. It 'worked' for both of them because we deployed in VQ as crews and not as a squadron and the schedule could be changed with a lot more ease than other squadrons.

I say it 'worked' for them because both of them were 'that' guy. Rugby boy was a smooth operator anyways who had the maturity of a freshman and tried to weasel his way into every good deal he could find. Soccer boy was not as bad but he was gone a lot more and was a bigger problem to the squadron. And while the squadron could work around their schedules, it was very difficult to juggle 'their' schedules and the squadrons. There was plenty of grumbling in Ops, among the DH's and JO's about the two guys and the 'special' treatment they got.

So, if you want to try and explore the option of doing sports, more power to you. But in my experience, trying to balance three jobs in the military (your ground job and flying are two jobs sometimes) is difficult at best and will cost you in your primary career. You have many responsibilities in the military and possibly a family, why make another huge commitment when you have so many already?

Don't be 'that guy'.

 

[bor0101]

I understand that it's not always practical to be an athlete in the military. But based on the results of that website (air force usually #1 and navy #2), does it mean that af and navy are more accomodating for this?

 

[Mumbles]

learn to play golf

 

[HeyJoe]

We had a Tomcat pilot who was a gifted tennis player who wanted to go pro so skipper arranged for him to get shore duty at USNA where he coached tennis and played on the pro circuit. He finally realized that he was relatively old to be a top ranked pro, but he managed to play in every port we visited and even walked onto a tourament in Monaco.

 

[magnetfreezer]

I understand that it's not always practical to be an athlete in the military. But based on the results of that website (air force usually #1 and navy #2), does it mean that af and navy are more accomodating for this?

On the AF side it probably has more to do with the AF having more engineering/acquisitions/finance/public affairs/other non-deploying types who work 8-4 jobs and have time to go TDY for sports, etc. Don't know about how it would work with AF flying but I would assume it would have the same type of scheduling concerns that the Navy/USMC posters were talking about.

 

[skim]

Im working on my golf.

 

[rookie7734]

When I was a young single NFO in VQ-3, NAS Guam, I played in the inter-service football league. It was probably about the caliber of Junior College football.

Viet Nam was going strong and the Air Force has an awesome team every year at Anderson AFB. There were tons of B-52 squadrons attached to Anderson at the time with lots of enlisted who played for their team. I played for the Naval Air Station which also had the Naval Hospital to recruit from.

There were 10 teams in all and the games were intense. As one of only two officers on the team, I wasn't sure how it would affect my flying status, but we were able to make things work. I did not make all the practices, but did not miss a game. In the last game of the season, against Anderson AFB, I carried the ball off tackle and ended up breaking my ankle pretty bad in the second quarter. It took two operations to repair me and I was in a "down status" for 6 weeks.

I spent alot of time standing duty and doing my legal officer job. I missed out on one the better deployments over Christmas with an all bachelor crew to the PI and then Australia over New Years. My old roomate still talks about that deployment.

The next year the coach wanted me to play again. It was tempting, but I had just gotten married and I wasn't sure the CO would be pleased, so I declined. That year the Naval Air Station/Naval Hospital team won the island championship and got to travel to Japan for the Regionals. I missed out again.