PAGE DESIGN BY//ADAM CANADY
Westward bound West duo heads to West Point Military Academy
caroline.vanvoorhis@wsspaper.com
A typical summer for most includes eating lots of ice cream, hanging out with friends, sleeping twice as much as during the school year and soaking up rays at the pool. Replace those activities with putting IVs in classmates’ arms, getting a tube pushed up your nose and down your esophagus and going into a gas house without a gas mask and you have the summer plans of seniors Olivia Fairfield and CJ Drew. Both Fairfield and Drew will be cutting their summers short to start basic training at the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York. Fairfield will be attending West Point Prep for a year before West Point, a program that will provide her with “the academic, leadership and physical skills that will prepare [her] for success” as a cadet at West Point, according to the school’s website. While attending West Point Prep, she will be taking smaller classes that help with stress relief and study habits for her upcoming four years at West Point. She will also be practicing volleyball with the West Point coaches and red-shirting for a year. Although she is on a different track than Drew, who will graduate in four years, they both have intense basic training this summer for which they have begun preparation. On top of getting ready for nationals with her Iowa Rockets volleyball team, she lifts weights and has made it a goal to run five miles a day in the summer. Drew currently gets in 200 sit-ups and push-ups every other day, runs four to five miles a day and plans to continue these activities throughout the summer. “Olivia and I will be marching back and forth to Ghurties in our combat boots with forty pounds of gear in the heat of the day,” said Drew, explaining that they need to break in the combat boots, because all training at West Point is done in those boots and “ACU’s”, the army combat uniforms. 47 THE LAST STORY
After summer training, the actual school year will start on August 13th for Fairfield and August 20th for Drew. Although they start on different days, Drew and Fairfield will have the same itinerary virtually every school day. They will be woken up every morning by a cannon at 6 a.m. and will report to breakfast formation by 7 a.m., where they will watch the raising of the flag before going into the dining hall. They will then attend class from 8-4 p.m., and go to practice from 4-6 p.m., as playing a sport is mandatory. Following dinner, they will have time to start their homework for the day. Although the training sounds grueling and the schedule exhausting, both Fairfield and Drew are excited for the challenge and ready to deal with whatever is thrown at them. Fairfield’s older sister, Christiana ’10, is currently a sophomore at West Point and has warned both future cadets about what all is to come. “You would think that [Christiana’s] stories would scare me away, but I really like a challenge and there is no other school like West Point at all. It’s an awesome opportunity and people are so different there-they take care of each other and would never let each other fail,” Olivia said. Drew also talked to Christiana before making his final decision to attend West Point. “[Christiana] had great things to say [about West Point]. We talked, she warned me about a few things, and she made sure I wanted to go for the right reasons.” Both Drew and Fairfield grew up knowing they wanted to serve their country in some way. Drew’s mother was raised minutes from the West Point campus and both future cadets’ grandfathers served in the military. However, neither Fairfield nor Drew set their sights on West Point until sophomore year. “Sophomore year was the first time I visited. It looked really brutal, but [also like] something I wanted to do,” Drew said. During Fairfield’s second year of
PHOTO BY// ADAM CANADY
BY CAROLINE VAN VOORHIS
Seniors Olivia Fairfield and CJ Drew will be heading to West Point next year.
high school, she also started gaining interest in West Point after Christiana committed to going there and playing volleyball. Two years later, Fairfield and Drew made their idea to go to West Point official. But their planning for the future didn’t stop there. Both aim to serve in the military for at least 20 years, a benchmark that provides many benefits for army people. Drew’s ultimate goal is to serve in airborne infantry, which is “basically light infantry. I could be deployed at any time, anywhere in the world. I would jump out of airplanes in front of the main assault, and be the first into the fight. It is one of the more dangerous [jobs], but it’s what the best West Point cadets want to do; it’s the hardest
job to get.” Fairfield has a different career in mind, however, as women are not allowed to be in combat. She wants to be in military intelligence, explaining it as the “behind the scenes work” that allowed the military to find Osama bin Laden. This job requires a lot of translating, so she will be learning Arabic or Chinese during her years at school. Although the years in between will differ for Fairfield and Drew, both of their military careers will start with the physical challenges of basic training and end with the mental satisfaction of having devoted their lives to serving our country.