Navy Secretary Ray Mabus wants you to be a winner. Winners root for Navy. Like Midshipman 1st Class Rylan Tuohy before them, Mabus and his team decided to channel a topical pop cultural moment with the leader’s 2015 Army-Navy video. If you’ve watched live television (or forgotten to fast-forward through your DVR’d commercials) at all this year, you’ve likely seen the two Robe Lowes or Tony Romos — one cool and one creepy, etc. — from DirectTV’s viral advertising campaign. In a nod to those ads, Mabus presents as two football fans: One Navy and one Army. One is looking forward to…
Browsing: usna
Navy quarterback Keenan Reynolds was back on the Heisman voting homepage Thursday, a day after a fan uproar when it was discovered that record-setting quarterback he had been automatically removed from the main ballot in an online fan poll for college football’s most prestigious award. The controversy erupted Wednesday afternoon, when @NavyAthletics sent out a tweet that they’d noticed Reynolds’ name mysteriously missing from the main page of ESPN’s fan voting contest for the Heisman trophy. A Deadspin story fueled the fire, and by that evening, ESPN had given a statement to the Washington Post about why Reynolds had vanished from the page. “Keenan Reynolds has…
Most people think of the Naval Academy’s annual Herndon climb as a hot, sweaty, smelly slog up a greased obelisk that can last for hours as mids climb up and tumble down. But it really depends on what kind of music you set it to. The Naval Academy put this video together of Monday’s climb, set to a jaunty instrumental number. The class of 2018 went from plebes to midshipmen after one hour and 38 minutes scrambling up the Herndon monument. In the end, Midshipman 4th Class Javarri Beachum, a 19-year-old Florida native, put an end to it all when he nudged a…
Dating at a small school can be complicated, particularly when there are all kinds of rules about canoodling outside of your rank or within your company. Luckily, the Naval Academy midshipmen looking to cross over to the dark side have a place to publicly declare their affection for one another on the USNA Crushes site, where the moderator (moderators?) posts anonymously submitted love notes. There are 100 posts as of Friday, with 952 likes and counting. Most of them are unique, but there are a couple of popular kids with more than one admirer. Allison Shafer and Ryan Breznik, congratulations.…
If you’re in the market for a one-of-a-kind 100-foot yacht at a bargain basement price, has Craigslist got a deal for you! This 1985 Naval Academy trawler that took generations of midshipmen on summer cruises, according to the seller’s description, sports one of the “best” hulls built in history, made from double-planked Alaskan cedar. In its former life, the yard patrol boat now billed as the “ultimate trawler yacht” was a training vessel for mids that went on umpteen cruises up and down the East coast, giving mids their first taste of at sea life and liberty ports. The academy is…
American soccer fans adopted “I believe that we will win” as a rallying cry for Team USA during July’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil, but as it turns out, the slogan dates back to 1998 at the Naval Academy, thanks to then-Midshipman 4th Class Jay Rodriguez. According to ESPN, the chant debuted at the 1999 Army-Navy football game, lead by Rodriguez’s friend and academy cheerleader, Corey Strong. It’s been adopted by numerous teams since then, but if one university has its way, no one else will be using the slogan in the future. San Diego State is vying for a trademark…
For as long as women have been in the Navy, they’ve been wearing a different cover than the one issued to men. That is, until last year, when the service began wear tests on a combination cover, using the Naval Academy midshipmen as research subjects. “I hate it,” an unidentified graduating female midshipmen told Navy Times at the academy’s commissioning ceremony Friday. “Almost everyone I know hates it.” The female “bucket” hat has come into question recently, as Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has pushed to make male and female service members’ uniforms more, well, uniform — starting with unisex covers.…
The Naval Academy on Sunday posted photos of midshipmen getting tossed into the Severn River. It’s part of a Final Fall Parade tradition, in which plebes chase their company commanders to the river. Once at the dock, the commanders are hoisted up and tossed in. The temperature topped out in the high-50s over the weekend in Annapolis, Md., so you know that water was cold. The academy posted an album from the day’s festivities on Facebook, with the accompanying description: Midshipmen marched in the final fall parade of the 2013 season on Friday, October 25. However – this parade did not end…
(Full results here.)