Best Sapper Competition / Meet Your Sappers
Venue
Waynesville Roubidoux Park
Event Organizer
MAJ Jeremy Reynolds
Category
Big Festivals & Events
Hours
April 26, 2025
8:45am - 12:30pm
The City of Waynesville will host the Best Sapper Competition from Fort Leonard Wood in conjunction with a Meet Your Sappers event in Roubidoux / Waynesville City Park.
This event is open to the public and crowds will have the opportunity to see helicopters take off and land, cheer on the competitors in the Best Sapper Competition, engage with local vendors and organizations, and see military vehicles and equipment up close. Meet and greet the Sappers after the competition and the DJ will start the festivities at 8:30 am.
For more information about this event be sure to follow the Best Sapper Competition Face book!
The 18th Lt. Gen. Robert B. Flowers Best Sapper Competition is slated to be held April 25 through 28 at #FortLeonardWood and will showcase the U.S. Army's elite combat engineering Soldiers.
The competition kicks off at 9 a.m., April 26, at the Roubidoux Park in downtown Waynesville, Missouri, with an opening ceremony that will feature competitors being dropped off from Chinook helicopters and non-standard physical fitness test events. The ceremony is free and open to the public.
Throughout the competition, 35 two-person teams will travel more than 50 miles in 73 hours, throughout the wooded and hilly Ozarks, while carrying a ruck sack that weighs more than 50 pounds and competing in a variety of events, testing them to their mental and physical breaking point.
Soldiers will compete on limited amounts of sleep and will have to complete a series of tasks, including demolition, land navigation, steel cutting, mountaineering, a wire obstacle breach, marksmanship, timber cutting techniques, bridge reconnaissance and utilizing handheld mine detectors.
The name “Sapper” is derived from French, and originates from the early days of siege warfare, when military engineers would dig tunnels under castle walls. Among other skills, today’s Sappers breach fortifications, place and remove landmines, work with explosives and install portable bridges
