Specialist and sergeant win Best Ranger competition for first time in nearly 40 years
Two enlisted soldiers took top honors in this year’s Best Ranger Competition, a grueling three-day event held at Fort Benning, Georgia. They are the most junior enlisted team to win the competition in nearly 40 years.
Spc. Caleb Godbold and Sgt. Drew Schorsch, both assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment, beat 60 other teams from across the Army to win the competition.
Godbold is the first specialist to win the event since 2023, a Fort Benning spokesperson said. Prior to that, specialists earned top spots in the competition in 2006, 1996, and 1988.
“It means a lot to represent the [Ranger] Regiment and everybody who came before us,” Godbold said in a statement to Task & Purpose. “We had a lot of support behind us, and we’re grateful for that. We’re proud we got it done, but we’re excited to get back to the team and get back to work.”
Schorsch said that on the first day of the competition, he ran out of water during the first event, but Godbold gave him some of his so he could keep going.
“Later on in the competition, I carried some of his weight when he was cramping,” Schorsch said in a statement. “That’s what made the difference. We had each other’s back, and knew that when one of us was in trouble, the other was there to carry the load.”
This year marked the first time since 1988 that a specialist and sergeant have won the Best Ranger competition, according to the website for the National Ranger Association, a non-profit organization established to improve the competition.
Retired Sgt. 1st Class Trenton Petty, the association’s executive director, said he and other enlisted veterans are “pumped” to see two enlisted soldiers win this year’s event.
“For a while there they started talking about this as the ‘Best Lieutenant Competition,’ because there’s a bunch of years where you had two lieutenants winning,” Petty told Task & Purpose. “So, last year we made it to where in order to have a two-officer team, you had to submit an [exception to policy], and units were still doing that, but it was nice to see a two-enlisted team — and especially a young enlisted team — come out on top.”
This year was the first time that more than 60 teams took part in the Best Ranger Competition, said Petty, who was involved in planning this year’s events. The teams also had to compete in three “mystery” events this year, whereas in the past they’ve typically faced one such surprise. (During one such mystery event in 2022, a soldier managed to pry open a box without unlocking it first — a solution that shows that “technically correct” is the best type of correct.)
This year’s mystery challenges included loading and shooting a flintlock Kentucky long rifle and pistol along along with throwing a tomahawk axe at a target; a Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape event; and then a third event that paid tribute to Paul Revere, who warned colonists in 1775 that British troops were coming, in which the teams had to find hints to escape from three connex boxes, Petty said.
“It’s one thing to just get through one mystery event not knowing how to do anything,” Petty said. “It’s a whole another world when all three days you have a different mystery event of something you haven’t been able to see or prepare for.”