Soldiers persevere through mental, physical obstacles during MEDCoE Best Medic Challenge

Story by Jose Rodriguez

U.S. Army Medical Center of Excellence

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, November 7, 2024—Eighteen Soldiers from across the U.S. Army Medical Center of Excellence and its subordinate commands competed in teams of two for the title of Best Medics during the MEDCoE Best Medic Challenge that took place at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston and Camp Bullis Nov. 3 -7, 2024.

Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Cavender and Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Vela, representing the MEDCoE Headquarters Support Company are this year’s Best Medics and will compete at the CSM Jack L. Clark Jr. Best Medic Competition early in 2025.

First and second runners up are Sgt. 1st Class Gilbert Garcia and Staff Sgt. Jarrod Green from the 232nd Medical Battalion 2nd Lt. Skyler Larsen and Sgt. 1st Class Ryan Campbell from the 264th Medical Battalion. In total nine teams competed in the event from all four MEDCoE battalions, the Medical Noncommissioned Officers Academy and the Headquarters Support Company.

The challenge allows MEDCoE Soldiers, who are often trainers and instructors, to compete and demonstrate their proficiency in their profession to their peers, subordinates and superiors. It also demonstrates the strength, adaptability, and readiness of Soldiers in a variety of austere environments through a series of tasks and challenges. The event included the Expert Field Medical Badge Physical Fitness Assessment, combat water survival test, litter obstacle course, rifle qualification, warrior tasks and battle drills, day and night land navigation, non-traumatic clinical patient evaluation, prolonged casualty care, mass casualty response with an air medical evacuation, written test, and culminated with the Norwegian Foot March. The NFM is a 30 km (18.6-mile) march with an 11 km (25 lb.) rucksack. Eight competitors earned a bronze Norwegian Foot March badge, and with Larsen earning the only silver among the teams.

This year’s Best Medics began preparing for the event months ahead of time.

“We did a lot of physical and mental preparation for it,” Cavender said. “Months prior to the competition, we completely revamped our training programs, you know, to gear it more towards what the competition is going to entail like, a lot of running, rucking and medical tasks.”

Cavender, a combat medic himself, is also an EFMB test control officer, and says he will continue to train and prepare physically and mentally over the next couple of months, but says he won’t stress.

“I usually try not to stress too much about it,” he explained. “A lot of people tend to worry about what other teams are doing and what the competition can entail, and just like we did with this one, we just take it a day at a time, a task at a time, and just worry about our team. That’s all you can really do is focus on yourselves, but I try not to stress about it.”

This year’s event was focused on preparing soldiers to win against any adversary in a joint, multi-domain battle, high-intensity conflict. With the U.S. Army’s shift from brigade-centric warfare to large-scale combat operations, multi-domain operations, and force modernization, the role of providing medical care also needs to change to meet the Army’s needs. Operational forces will require army medical professionals to be more prepared and capable of providing medical support in large scale combat operations.