AMES, Iowa - The Iowa State University Army ROTC program won Army-wide honors as the top overall college cadet command for the western half of the United States.
The MacArthur Award is given to the highest-scoring cadet command in categories including grade point average, physical fitness, leadership scores and other criteria.
Two overall awards are given annually - one to the best school among the 142 Army preparatory programs west of the Mississippi River, and one to the top-scoring of the 130 in the eastern United States.
Xavier won for the eastern half of the U.S.
Cadets who are between their junior and senior years are rated while training in Fort Lewis, Wash. ISU sent 18 cadets to the annual training last summer. Four of ISU's group were rated in the top 10 percent overall of the 3,800 cadets rated nationally.
The head of the battalion is glad for the award, but knows that there is a deeper reward than being recognized by the Army for developing better soldiers and leaders.
"Being No. 1 is great; it gives the cadets great bragging rights," said Lt. Col. Lawrence Braue, commanding officer of the Cyclone Battalion and professor of Military Science. "But the bottom line is that they are going to be better lieutenants when they walk out of here.
"Soon they are going to be in charge of 30 to 50 lives, and that's a lot of responsibility for a 22-year-old college graduate," he said.
One of those cadets, Zach McVey, a senior from Burlington majoring in psychology, thinks the program can get even better in the future.
"Now that we've hit No. 1, we're going to work hard to keep it," he said. "And I think the group behind us (juniors) is far better than we were at that stage."
Braue believes this is the first time an ISU battalion has been nationally ranked, and he's proud of his group.
"I'd put our cadets against any program in the nation," he said.