Sports Today: Douglas senior fares well at warfare training challenge

It's not much of a stretch to call the Boyds a military family.

Eldest child, Army Sgt. Michael Boyd, was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq earlier this week. He is currently recovering in a Qatar hospital with casts on each ankle and shrapnel wounds.

His brother, Chris, is in the U.S. Marine Corps., and Douglas High senior Matt is fast on their heels.

"I want to go into the military after high school," Boyd said. "No question, I want to join the Marines."

He's off to a good start.

After hearing from a teacher about the Mountain Warfare Training Challenge at the Marine base outside of Bridgeport, Calif., he was on board.

"My teacher just showed everyone the flyer and said it would take a real man to get through something like this," Boyd said. "I wanted to try it."

He did a little more than that. Boyd took third in the under-19 age group and placed 26th overall out of 512 participants with a time of 53 minutes, 13 seconds.

"I got there and looked around and saw a lot of people," he said. "I knew it would be tough to get through and I knew a lot of people probably wouldn't be finishing."

He was left with little preparation time, basically showing up to compete on a course he'd never seen before.

"I was just hoping to rely on my football conditioning and I figured that would keep me in it," said Boyd, who lettered in both football and wrestling at Douglas last year.

He turned out needing every bit of that conditioning for the 6.2-mile course which included several 5-foot wall climbs, a tire run, an army crawl under a long stretch of temporary fencing, a large stack of hay bales and an appropriately named climb called Heart Attack Hill.

"I got on that part and thought I really was going to have a heart attack," Boyd said.

Even so, he was surprised at how well it went.

"I got out toward the front early on and that helped," he said. "I was so surprised because at one point there was probably about a football field between the group I was with and the rest of the pack.

"I kept thinking, 'Don't get caught, don't get caught.' It went pretty well."

The two that finished in front of him in his age group were both bound for college with athletic scholarships.

"I want to do it again next year," he said. "I'll know how to prepare for it better and I'm trying to get some of my friends to compete with me."

Boyd said he hopes to eventually become an officer in the Marines and perhaps get into engineering.

In the meantime, though, he has been preparing for his senior football season.

"I think we're looking pretty good," he said. "Everyone is working very hard and it's a good group of players."