USMA In The News

Nicholas Sterghos, a Habersham Central graduate and a second year cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, will compete this weekend in the USA Triathlon National Collegiate Championship.

The event, which will be held on the campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, consists of a 1,500-meter swim, followed by a 40-kilometer bike segment and concludes with a 10-kilometer run.

The West Point team will face 72 other colleges and university squads, including Georgia, Georgia Tech, the United States Naval Academy, the United States Air Force Academy, and the United States Coast Guard Academy.

Sterghos, who was a decorated distance runner during his high school career, is one of the newest members of the 26-member Army team, which includes 17 men and nine women, which will make the trip to Tuscaloosa.

The swim segment will take place in the cold waters of the Black Warrior River. Since the water temperature is projected to be between 64 and 69 degrees, the athletes will compete in wetsuits as they cover roughly 0.93 mile in the water.

The biking segment will be held on a two-loop course, with three turn-arounds per loop. The course, which is 24.8 miles, ranges in elevation from 150 to 400 feet above sea level.

The competitors will put their running shoes on for the final segment of the event, which is a 6.2-mile road race.

Sterghos has been a member of the Army cross country team two years and was a member of the track team during the spring of his freshman year at the Academy. He joined the triathlon team this winter, completing a two-day tryout in January.

He has competed in three triathlons this spring, two in mid-March while the team was undergoing a nine-day training period during Spring Break in Clermont, Fla., and the third at the beginning of April in Galveston, Texas.

Sterghos finished in the medals in each of the three events.

In the Florida's Great Escape Triathlon on March 11 at Lake Louisa State Park, Sterghos finished fourth in his age group and was the sixth finisher on the Army Team. A week later on March 18 in the Wildman Triathlon at Moss Park in southeast Orlando, he finished fifth overall, first in his age group, and was the fourth finisher on the Army Team. On April 1 at the Lonestar Triathlon Festival at Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas, he competed in the Quarter Ironman race and finished fifth overall, second in his age group, and was the second finisher on the Army Team.

Athletically, he has scored the maximum grade of 300 points on the Army Physical Fitness Test each of the five times he has taken it and, thereby, qualified to be evaluated using the West Point Extended Grading Scale, where only last week he scored 352 out of a maximum 375 points. Combined with his scores on the Indoor Obstacle Course, which each cadet must take and pass annually, and his physical education course grades, Sterghos is ranked athletically in the top 6 percent of the Class of 2009.

Sterghos is also excelling academically as he has been on the Dean's List for each of the three semesters he has completed thus far at West Point, and is in the top 30 percent of the Class of 2009.

Sterghos has selected Life Science as his academic major, and Nuclear Engineering as his engineering sequence requirement, and intends to choose the Medical Corps as his Branch, and then hopes to qualify for selection into the program in which the Department of the Army allows the United States Military Academy to send up to 2 percent (about 18-20 cadets) of each graduating class directly to medical school immediately after graduation.

His summer training has already been approved, as he will begin Air Assault School on May 27. On June 11, he will begin duty as a member of the training cadre during the first detail of Cadet Field Training for the rising sophomore Class of 2010, in the position of Squad Leader. Finally, between July 15 and Aug. 10, he is tentatively scheduled for a full three-week period of medical indoctrination and training at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.