Exray Unclassified | Earned Here
This week, Fort Benning hosts the 42nd annual Lt. Gen. David E. Grange Jr. Best Ranger Competition. April 10 through 12, two-man buddy teams from across the United States Armed Forces will spend 62 continuous hours working through long-distance movements, night land navigation, technical rope courses, live-fire ranges, and a series of physical and tactical events designed to find out who is left standing when everyone else has stopped.
Exray produced individually customized performance tees for every competitor this year, and while we’re incredibly proud to play a small part in the event, the competition itself is the story worth telling.
What the Best Ranger Competition Is
The competition was founded in 1982 by Richard Leandri as a way to honor his close friend, Lieutenant General David E. Grange Jr., a former Ranger instructor and director of the Ranger department at Fort Benning. The first iteration was a straightforward contest among buddy teams within the Ranger department itself. By 1985 it had expanded to include light infantry units. By 1987 the Army opened it to any unit with Ranger-coded positions. Today it draws two-man teams from across the entire U.S. Armed Forces, with entry limited to those who have earned their Ranger tab through the U.S. Army Ranger Course.
That last point matters. The Ranger Course at Fort Benning is considered the most demanding small unit leadership course in the U.S. military. Earning a Ranger tab is a prerequisite just to enter the competition. The teams showing up this week have already proven something before the first event kicks off.
What the Competition Demands
Sixty-two hours. Back to back events. Roughly 60 miles of movement on foot carrying nearly 80 pounds of equipment. Sleep is not part of the schedule.
The event format changes year to year, but the core demands stay consistent. Teams are tested on physical fitness, land navigation, marksmanship, tactical tasks, and the kind of decision-making that only holds up when the body is running on nothing. The point is not just to find the fastest or the strongest. It is to find the team that keeps executing correctly when every other variable is working against them.
It is worth noting that the competition is open to the public. If you are near Fort Benning this week, it is worth going.
Why This Matters to Us
Exray was built around one straightforward idea: make gear for people who are part of something bigger than themselves, and make it well enough that it holds up to the conditions they actually operate in.
The Best Ranger Competition is one of the clearest expressions of that idea in action. The teams competing this week are not there for recognition. They are there because the standard exists and they want to find out where they stand against it. That is the kind of commitment that makes sense to us.
We are proud to be part of it, even in a small way. To every team on the start line at Camp Rogers on Friday morning: go far, together.