By: Lauren Linville

A group of OU ROTC cadets will participate in the Bataan Memorial Death March at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on March 19. Cadets chose between participating in the heavy weight or light weight team.

The Bataan Memorial Death March is “conducted in honor of the heroic service members who defended the Philippine Islands during World War II,” according to official march website.

     Researcher and Ph.D. student, Brandon Stone, used his knowledge of special forces from his past as a strength and conditioning coach to conduct an eight-week long study on the way the Bataan cadets’ bodies will change with this type of training.

“We took the Bataan group and then we’re going to compare them against the other cadets that aren’t participating in Bataan,” Stone said.

Stone and his colleagues focused on two components of the study, body composition and force.

“I anticipate body weight and body fat to go down,” he said. “With that sometimes you’d expect the force capabilities to go down because the mass has gone down, but they’re young so part of this is they could be getting stronger.”

Stone chose this study for his own research, but ultimately so that the ROTC leadership and cadets could see how load carriage, or ruck, training affects the human body.

“It was more how can I help you prepare the cadets for when they commission and what things can benefit us both,” Stone said.

The study was entirely volunteer-based and will be completed once the Cadet’s return from New Mexico.