Students to compete in Best Racer competition

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Murray State seems to host a variety of competitions throughout the year and next week is no different.

Murray State’s own Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps will host the 2012 Best Racer competition from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Hamilton Athletic Field.

The competition will consist of 10 different events contestants will take part in. The events are pushups, pullups, situps, tug ‘o war, high crawl course, sand bag relay, tire flip, humvee pull, team carry race, water jug dash and monkey bars.

“Racer Challenge is a series of 10 events that tests your physical fitness, mental endurance, agility, stamina, all that stuff, it’s pretty tough,” said Colby Davis, senior from Paducah, Ky., who coordinated the competition. “These are events that we do on a weekly basis. It’s a different in life for people who are civilians or just college students, but it’s a good workout.”

The first Best Racer Competition was in 2010. The organizer, Lt. Jeff Slinker, came up with the competition in December 2009.

“He was the brains behind this,” Davis said. “He drafted this up as his project so the actual official first Best Racer didn’t start until April of 2010.”

The competition is not only good exposure for the winning team or Murray’s ROTC program, but it also helps to get word out about the organization it benefits.

“It’s good exposure but more importantly it’s what it benefits,” Davis said. “It’s a series of 10 events to participate in but all the proceeds to go to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, which is a military-only fund that goes to people that were wounded in combat.”

According to its website, the Wounded Warrior Project sets out to “raise awareness and enlist the public’s aid for the needs of injured service members, help injured service members aid and assist each other and to provide unique, direct programs and services to meet the needs of injured service members.”

Proceeds will be collected from the cost to participate in the event which is $80 per team, or $20 a person and $60 for any additional teams per organization.

Last year, Lambda Chi Alpha won the overall event and Sigma Sigma Sigma won the coveted spirited award. There will also be awards given for best male, best female and best overall team.

This year, a wide array of students will be participating in the competition to be the best Racer.

“We’ll have almost every fraternity and every sorority present, different subsections, you’ll have people that just like to workout at Wellness, you’ll have fraternity people, you’ll have independents, some college heads from different dormitories and some people that aren’t affiliated with anything. Engineering teams, business, rowing team and rugby is putting a team together,” Davis said.

Aside from the wide array of individuals and the different events to participate in, there will be community members there supporting the event.

“This year we will have 103.7, 89.3, the National Guard is going to be out there recruiting and giving away stuff, Active Duty is going to be recruiting,” Davis said. “It’s a ‘the more, the merrier’ event.”

There will also be items given away.

“We have T-shirts for every competitor and medallions,” said 2nd Lt. Nicholas Prouse. “It’s a good opportunity to go out there and see what the program has to offer. Not only is it a competition it also represents some of the physical they as cadets endure while they go to school or while they train to be a future leader.”

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