After attending their regular morning classes on campus the following day, the hands-on experience began in earnest upon arrival at Fort Campbell. A sergeant in military fatigues greeted the student-athletes on the bus and offered a cursory outline of what was in store.
Moving at a jog at all times after stepping off the bus, they first limbered up with the decidedly intense stretching and warm-up routine employed at Fort Campbell’s U.S. Army Air Assault School. Bodies awakened from the bus ride, they moved on to a series of obstacle challenges, including crawling through the dirt and scaling chest-height hurdles.
Garrison Morrill crawls under obstacles.
From these largely individual challenges, they were divided into four groups and progressed to collaborative challenges.
- One involved a spiderweb of wires suspended in the air, with student-athletes working together to pass teammates through open spaces without touching the wires.
- Another imaginary “lava field” required student-athletes to cross an area of open grass using only a series of seemingly randomly placed wooden planks.
- A third was an otherwise familiar scavenger hunt made more difficult by the fact that all but one group member were blindfolded.
Then came the rappelling wall, what most assumed was the final challenge. No one was required to rappel, but almost all elected to strap into harnesses and drop over the edge—including some staff members who otherwise remained on the sidelines during the day.
“It is very scary going up there—I’m not afraid of heights, but when you’re up there and you’re looking down 40 feet, you’re like, ‘Whoa,’” Biskup said. “But all the men there really were very supportive. They’re telling us we’re fine, we’ll be good, trust them. In that environment, it’s hard not to trust them. They know what they’re doing. They do this every day. It was fun to get to do it with a lot of your teammates. There’s like five of us going at once, scaling the wall. So it was a really cool experience.”
Co-captain Kemper Robinson sizes up the rappelling wall.
In more earthbound moments, the instruction from their military guides was more direct. There were no Hollywood-style drill sergeants, no one screaming at participants to drop and give them 40 push-ups. But there also wasn’t much in the way of dialog that might delay the proceedings. As Hewitt and Biskup both noted, student-athletes used to probing the “why” behind even basic of instructions were told they had all the information they needed to work together toward a solution.
“They were very cutthroat,” Biskup said. “There were a lot of women, which was awesome, and they were like: ‘This is your activity. I can’t say anything else. Don’t ask me questions. Go do it.’ It really forced us to figure things out on our own. How can we do this without knowing a lot, without asking questions, without doubting ourselves—and do it fast? I felt like that change of tone definitely forced us to be pretty resilient and persevere.”
Daring to Lead
Ahead of the trip, Fort Campbell organizers asked Hewitt about leadership roles for each exercise. She knew seniors and returning captains Cate Bradley and Kemper Robinson would feature prominently. Seeing who else stepped to the fore would go a long way toward determining the success of the entire endeavor—and perhaps the season.
Principles of leadership are a frequent subject when Brower meets with student-athletes. On one visit, he asked whether they would rather receive feedback from a coach or teammate. To what Hewitt described as both her and the general’s surprise, the student-athletes almost unanimously expressed a preference for hearing it from coaches.
Hewitt is hardly an old soul—her All-American playing career at North Carolina is barely two decades gone—but this generation’s apparent preference still felt counterintuitive. She always preferred hearing it from a respected peer. Whatever the cause, she’s placed newfound emphasis in recent years on consciously developing peer-to-peer leadership skills. With Brower’s help, including regular meetings with a leadership group, they emphasize being task- and goal-oriented and speaking up if someone strays from purpose.
“Something we’ve spent a lot of time on is the idea that if you’re a leader, you have to get comfortable giving and receiving feedback—whether it’s to and from the coaches or to and from your teammates,” Hewitt said. “I just think the world has changed a lot. I think we are doing a better job of recognizing it and knowing that we’ve got to take some time away from just lacrosse and school and put some work into that. The better the leadership you have on your team, the further your team is going to go. They’re the ones on the field.”
Jaime Biskup, front right, and teammates Jiselle Jenkins, Jackie Nuchow and Kemper Robinson navigate the final challenge.
Biskup was among many who shone in that regard during the afternoon at Fort Campbell. She arrived a year ago as a fifth-year graduate transfer from Virginia. She was a captain during her final season in Charlottesville, but she tore an ACL for the second time before ever playing in game for the Commodores last spring. New to the team and still something of a stranger in Nashville, she nonetheless had a wealth of experience worth sharing. That juxtaposition made it a challenge to find the right moment to use her voice, even for someone who by nature doesn’t shy away from speaking up.
“I didn’t realize how many people really wanted me to be in that role and respected me in that sense,” Biskup said. “You come in as a transfer, and you don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. It’s their team. I’m older as a fifth-year, so I’ll let the seniors do their thing. I’m just here to help everyone through it. I realized along the way how many people cherished a lot of what I said and bought into my personality and my leadership tendencies. They allow me to do this. They allow me to speak my truth and be honest and be open and helpful.
“It was really awesome because these girls are some of the most incredible people I’ve met, and to have them really respect you is the best thing in the world. It’s a great feeling.”
As late as the middle of summer, she was unsure whether or not to come back for a sixth year and final season. She wondered if the injury was the universe’s sign that it was time for her to move on. Ultimately, the opportunity to compete alongside her teammates brought her back. And that means she owes them everything she can offer, even in those moments when it might be hard to hear.
“I want more time,” Biskup said. “I want to spend time with them. I want to be on this team with them. And I want to have that opportunity to empower them and share the love that they’ve given me back into the game.”
So, when Robinson picked her to serve as the leader for the “lava” challenge, she didn’t hesitate. She was going to get her teammates to the other side. Even as a team captain at Virginia, there has always been other captains, other voices. Here, as group leader, she was the only person allowed to speak. She read faces and body language, phrasing questions so that teammates could answer with a thumb up or down. She verbally prodded them to keep up the necessary pace and offered encouragement to keep spirits high. In the end, she successfully led all but a handful of people across the lava field in the allotted time.
“It was really cool to see her step out into that leadership role because she went through so much adversity last year, and she’s an incredible player,” Hewitt said. “No one doubts that, but she’s missed a lot, and I wasn’t sure where she felt like her voice would fit in. And she was great. She did an awesome job.”
Mission Accomplished
After sharing a meal with their hosts, lacrosse student-athletes piled onto the bus to return to campus and their beds. Though physically wiped out and perhaps a little delirious, as Biskup put it, the ride home was replete with laughter, pictures and reliving moments that will surely grow grander with each telling—the mud deeper and rappelling wall higher.
Certain the speaker didn’t know her coach was within earshot, Hewitt was pleased to hear one student-athlete express the conviction that the team should make the trip every year.
In her sixth year as a Division I athlete and countless more in high school and club lacrosse settings, Biskup is no stranger to team bonding exercises. After so many trust falls and games of two truths and a lie, a degree of skepticism is understandable, even healthy. But not with this team. Not after this road trip and what the men and women at Fort Campbell helped them understand they are capable of, together.
“I’ve definitely been in my fair share of team bonding that hasn’t been helpful and has been pretty frustrating,” Biskup said. “When you don’t have a close team, it is sometimes scary to go into those situations because you don’t feel comfortable and you don’t feel like you really have the best people around you. At Vanderbilt, it’s such a different atmosphere and an incredible experience. It feels very purposeful. Everything we’re doing is with purpose.
“It really feels like being a part of a team that genuinely cares about everything we’re doing, everything we do with each other, supporting each other throughout the process.”
