1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - One-On-One with DP: October 26th, 3pm – Mark Lakamp (Nebraska ROTC Captain)

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

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You bet, you win, you get paid, betus.com with promo code EB-125. It's time to go one-on-one with DP. Coming at you live from the couple Chevrolet GMC studios. Here is your host, Derek Pearson, presented by Beatrice Bakery on 93-7 the Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. Happy Tuesday, everybody.

It's a pretty good one. It's World Series Tuesday, game one. Braves Astros. Any other World Series first day? This one, kind of feel it. I think I expect something really cool to happen. But we'll talk about that later. You know how to engage 402, 464, 56685,

Honda-Lincoln Hotline, Haman text line you know how to track right so the Sartarhaman video stream we're live Facebook YouTube Twitch have at it find your way the chat rooms are open there as well shoot your comments shoot your thoughts share them and we'll get to them we'll get to them but up first best way to start this is to say thank you you're welcome I had the opportunity to to meet Nebraska's ROTC, ladies and gentlemen, had the opportunity to speak to them,

all courtesy of our guest. Let's bring in Captain Mark Laykamp. Sir, how are you, first of all, thank you for what you do. Let's get him, move his microphone over. Get him a little bit, yeah, let's get him where, yeah, we can get him in there. Thank you for what you do. And then the opportunity for me to meet your people, you have some great people representing University of Nebraska.

We really do. Yeah, it was fascinating to me. One, to watch the engagement, to watch the energy. There you go. To watch the energy and to see and hear the stories of you've got, you know, some baseball players in there that want to, And at some point in their lives, they want to coach. You've got some future broadcasters in there.

You've got folks that are just finding out who they are. And so folks who are just finding out what they're going to do with their lives. I said thank you for everybody that would never get the chance to be in that room and say thank you to you guys in person out loud. The three words that they know I love to use love out loud was an opportunity to thank you. Thank you guys for what you go through, what you've gone through, what you're going to go through, and then what you're going to do next. Sir, you've got a great, great group.

We really do. And I want to thank you for coming and talking to them. You know, we were talking before about what you're saying, why I wanted you to come. You know, I was playing on your coaching experience and how, you know, you take young men and women and coach them up to be the best they can be. Well, these young college students, you know, some of them, just in a few months. they're going to be out as second lieutenants and the Navy and Marine Corps. And they're going to be leading, you know, kids.

I can't call them kids, but young men and women who are right out of high school, who probably just left their high school courts or field or whatever. And the words that you can talk to them and tell them how to be a leader, how to be a mentor, how to have a love on their sailors and Marines, I think was very useful. And speaking with a lot of my midshipment afterwards, you know, both Friday night and then today back at school, they were really appreciative of those words

and they took on everything you'd say so thank you very much. It was impressive. It'll be one of my favorite nights and events at this point forward. It was amazing to be able to be in that space. And in preparing for it, I've given

keynote speeches and been the guest of honor, but that is such a ritual-based celebration that I kept finding myself looking over at you to re- balance. So I'll tell the folks.

So they had the reception and you're just mingling and talking to folks. And then they begin, they're getting ready to begin the ceremony. And he says, yeah, we have to walk in together. And I've never had a problem moving my feet. But walking in with you, just us. Yeah, I kind of, my feet, we're like, are you sure? what we're doing? Like, are we moving forward?

And then I'm watching your young people add attention for the duration of this. And they did so, so proudfully. So pridefully. It was like amazing to watch. But the way they looked at you told me that they were let. Like the way they looked at you told me

that they found safety and comfort guidance in you. You're asking me about leadership. Well, sir, your leadership was apparent. It was loud. It was strong. Bravo to what you do. Well, that's really a function of our staff. We've got an incredible group of Navy Marine Corps,

Gunnery Sergeant, and they're the ones who really engage in students and take them at the level that they need to be to be the future leaders of Marines and sailors that we need. So I've got a great staff and I want to thank them. I just got to stand at the front and look pretty. Maybe not so pretty. No, it was like, wait a minute.

We were standing there. I'm going, okay. And then the pictures, it was just, it was amazing to me to watch. So I'll ask this. These young people have to carry the workload of the average University of Nebraska student. And, and do that at the highest level. And so much more. So walk us through the average, the added things that the average has to go through.

Well, so in addition to whatever their normal course schedules are, and we have a variety of majors, pretty much any major you can take at school. We have a student who's either taking it or has taken over the last several years. They take a naval science class, so it's one three-hour class every week. So either, you know, two times a week, three times a week, an hour and a half hour, whatever it works out to be. And they take one of those every semester, it's kind of, you know, starting with, you know,

introduction, you know, for the freshman class I teach, and they walk through some more operational thing, navigation, seamanship, ship handling, weapon systems, a couple leadership courses. And then they finish up with, and their Marines take, they take some, you know, marine specific courses on, you know, maneuver warfare and history of warfare,

things like that. And then they finish up, their capstone course is leadership and ethics that I or my, you know, my predecessor and my followers will go on and teach, which kind of wraps up the four years before you send them out to the fleet. So there's that. So they have that extra three-hour class. So a lot of these students are taken 17, 18, 19 hours of class every semester

just based on graduating at time. We have Italian PT that's Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And so they show up at 5.30 and they go about 530 to 7. And we just do a variety of things to keep them in shape, make sure they're meeting their physical training requirements. And then we have our leadership lab. And that's where we really get the leadership out of them. So the battalion midshipmen, you know, are organized and they, you know, lead themselves.

And so, you know, the seniors, leading the juniors, lead to the sophomores, leading the freshmen. And they have two opportunities every week where they get together. We have a variety of things that, you know, either our staff will engage with and training, or sometimes the midshipmen will do the training after they've, you know, kind of run it through to see what they're going to do. And they basically manage everything they're going to do. additionally for their student organization they're one of the the registered student organizations on campus

they have to earn some money for things like Navy Ball so they work football games so you see the folks in the orange vest the football games doing the security so the Army Navy and Air Force RQCs all support that so every home football game they're pretty much out to the stadium and then we take turns with the other two services

doing they didn't clean up just not a lot of fun on some nights you know those late night games that's some late night late nights getting done. But that's how they fund their various events. So that's pretty busy during the fall time. And then additionally, a lot of them do color guard support. So you see we have the color guard at the games. I think, you know, every home game, football game. And this year, I believe we're going to be supporting most, if not all of the home basketball games for both, you know, men's and women's basketball. So we rotate that through. And again, that's all three

services, Army, Navy, and Air Force working that. But they're pretty busy folks. And you can really see, you know, when they get through four years of school here, you know, they've learned how to manage time and manage themselves so that as they go forward, they can be successful. Would you please give all of your titles? Because the university has a title, you within, within the military and your service. What are all the boxes we have to check? Well, it's really two titles. I'm the, from the Navy side, I am the commanding officer, the University of Nebraska, NRTC unit,

Navy RTC unit so that's that's what I get paid for okay and then I am a I think I think it's the term as a volunteer affiliate because the Navy or the universe doesn't pay me anything but I am the professor of naval science and department head for the Department of Naval Science so they they pretend like I'm like I'm you know an academic and got my my own PhD and everything you said pretend yeah I think you've got a master's in yeah I've got a master's yeah when you look at all the other professors on campus. You know, they've, they've got their, uh, their good degrees there. But life is back on sports beters and bet US has your NBA, NHL, UFC, PJ, PJ, and yes, NFL betting lines up for their 27th year and live betting and all of it. Log in to beatus.com.

Or call 80079-3-887. That's 80079 BETUS, bet US for 125% bonuses with promo code EB-125. Customer service pros are ready to get your phone, social and online sports betting kickoff started now. Play with the proven mainstay in the industry, bet US. You bet, you win, you get paid, betus.com with promo code EB-125. That's my title, so I'm the professor of naval science for the University of Nebraska. Okay, so we're talking to Mark Lake up, and it's interesting, again, a lot of the stories of where the young kids were from. where these candidates were from. What's the process in deciding who gets to be a part of this?

So we have really two ways you can do it. So if you want to get a scholarship and the Navy ROTC scholarships that you get coming out of high school are good for your full tuition fees and then a living stipend, some book stipends, or you can take room and board where basically get your room and board pay for. And a lot of these students, you, they're getting scholarships other ways because they're pretty high quality individuals. They get the, you know, I think the average ACT is a 31.5. And it's pretty amazing. Nick, you hear that, right?

Yeah. Okay. So they, you apply your senior year, probably into your junior year being your senior year. And there's a board process. And it looks at not just your academics. That's a big portion of it. But we look at the whole person. What do you do in school to be able to?

leader. Are you a team captain? Are you a class president? Are you part of student council or student body government? What do you do for a community service? You have volunteer hours. And then we get recommendations from a couple of teachers where they, you know, rank them how they are compared to all the students they've seen in their careers. They also have an interview with a ROTC officer where we kind of assess them. Hey, is this the kind of person I want to have in my wardroom? And based on all that they get scored and racked and stacked and they either offer a scholarship or not. And it's a pretty high bar. There's some really impressive students to get those scholarships.

And then the ones that don't, if they still want to be an officer in the Navy Marine Corps, they can go what's called the college program, which is basically it's like the walk-on program. So they join us. They get their uniforms, take all the classes. They do everything their scholarship, you know, brothers and sisters doing. but then they apply for a scholarship at the three-year point, at the two-year point, or if they want to, they can say, I don't want a scholarship, I just want to get my commission,

and so we give them a thumbs up or thumbs down at the national level. We look at their record and compare them across everybody out there, and I give them a chance to get their commission one way or the other, and we've had a lot of good success there. We actually don't get as many scholarship students to come to Nebraska. Once you get that scholarship, you can go to any school, that has a Navy-Ratzi program. So we get a lot of folks in a college program,

just like Nebraska's traditional walk-on program, that's kind of how we build our battalion up there. And we've had a lot of good success of the last several years getting our freshmen and our sophomores getting scholarships based on the performance here at Nebraska and be able to stick around and get their commission. The process within the state,

so for high school students in Nebraska, who would be interested in this sort of thing, What sort of numbers apply versus number accepted? Yeah, I'm not sure what, you know, for the state of Nebraska, what the numbers are at the national level. We'll usually get in about 3,000 applications. And somewhere on the order of probably about 1,300 people are offered scholarships to get a take rate right around 950,000 because not everybody. A lot of people apply to multiple programs. And so, hey, I got the Naval Academy and Navy Arc.

see which one I want to go to. I'll pick the one that makes sense for me. So we try to get in about a thousand scholarship admission every year. And then the college program, folks, we just kind of see what comes in the door. So it's about a third, but we have, you know, there's a floor of your minimum SAT or ACT to apply. And, you know, it's a pretty high, it's a pretty high bar. What's the minimum? The minimum, last year, we actually, we dropped it down just because COVID mess things up so bad.

It was, it was 1100. It used to be 1,200. Okay. We get it down to actually 1050s. We dropped to you last year. And we still had, you know, very high. You know, the average ACT was 31.5 or SAT equivalent was about 14, 10 or 20, something like that. Just really, really impressive scores and, you know, GPA's a match.

And you see, you know, all these, you know, all state, all county, you know, varsity letter winners, team captains, presidents of their class. Just all kinds of really impressive young men and women out there. What's the outreach? So to be able to, you said, you know, clean up, post-game, clean-up, Coast Guard, those sort of things. Armaggart, what do you do in the community? What do these young people do in the community to keep them connected, whether it's on campus or off-campus, outside of the work that they do, you know, at stadiums and events? Yeah, so we do some sort of community outreach, you know, every, you know,

know, at least one organized event per semester. Okay. Last year, we kind of switched that to a roadside cleanup just because that worked better than some of our, like everything else. Right. It's a weird year. We could walk along a highway and pick up trash, and that was no problem. The trash wasn't going to care if we were.

We're socially distant or not. Right, right. And then they also do, you know, a lot of them are part of other student organizations, like many other, many other, you know, students on campus, they go off and do things with their fraternities, with their team clubs, with their, whatever. That's what I was going to ask is that, again, that's the time management side of it. Again, the normal work rate of a University of Nebraska student plus all the additional

courses that need to be taken and mastered, aside from that, plus all the other training. Yep. The individual training and then the specific training based on what they want to do and events and guards and that sort of thing. Are you haven't been talking to the summer yet? Yeah, well, that's just it. It becomes, I don't want to call it labor of love, but it's a labor of love. It really is.

And speaking in the summer, so most college students, you know, they get to go home at summertime. And our students do too, but there is some Navy training in there. So they're going to spend anywhere from four to about eight weeks doing some specific training for the Navy Marine Corps. And it kind of, it starts, you know, hey, we're going to take you out to the fleet show you all the different things you may do when you get commissioned through their, their final trainings in the summer where the Marines go off to Officer Candid School out in Guantico, Virginia, and spend, you know, eight weeks working really hard, you know, those, you know,

20-mile ruck marches and up at four in the morning and, you know, taps at 2,200 and working hard. The Navy options go off to the ships or aviation squadrons. They'll follow along as junior officer and just basically learn what does a, what does a nuance and do when they get the fleet, how do you learn to lead sailors? What do you do to kind of master your craft there? Again, I have mad respect for people who can do things I can't do. And that takes a level of commitment that I didn't have in me.

Through all of that, the next group has to show up and to get here. When will the next group get here? When will they get to university? So they show up and we're at, we call it new student orientation, or I'm sorry, new student indoctrination, which is a Navy-wide thing. So all of our new students go to Navy Blue Camp of Great Lakes for a three-week period. We'll have several of them throughout the year, or throughout the summer, just to make sure, you know, we can get it right through because you've got to, you know, process about, you know, usually it's about $1,300 total when we have our scholarship folks and the college programmers who identify before the semester starts. And they spend three weeks there, kind of, they get their uniforms issued. We do all of the physical training, you know, get all their medical records taken care of.

And, you know, they learn to March. They get yelled at by the drill instructors, just all kinds of things. You know, welcome to the Navy. And then they come to Nebraska. The week before classes start, we get them using on a Wednesday or Thursday. And we move in the dorms early. You know, we make sure they've got all their uniforms. Then we kind of integrate them into the battalion.

We teach them about Nebraska. say, hey, here's some time management that you need to learn. Here are the sophomores and juniors that you're going to be working with this semester. You get to know them, you know, build that team. And then that freshman class, they will coalesce as a, you know, as their, you know, group working together. So they show up about a week before, well, half a week before school starts. You know, we give them, you know, all the gals we can on how to succeed as a new college student. And then turn them loose on a turn them loose on Saturday evening.

they get Sunday off and Monday morning they show up ready to go. It's just remarkable. So if I were to recommend a former high school catcher who, you know, he, he's got some strong qualities. He's got some strong qualities, but I'm not sure he's quite ready on the leadership level of it. He's talking about me. Really? So if I can, is there a way to move young Nick closer to that sort of work ethic and, and just to show him a little of what would be required, you know, so he can measure himself, you know.

You want to come to PT one morning? Is that early for you, Nick? What, what time is it? 5.30. That's not necessarily too early because, I mean, kickboxing is at six. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. Can you walk me through one of these, one of these, what's all involved? It really depends. They, they, they do a lot of stuff. It's a lot of, it's a lot of cardio. You saw the look at his face, right? You say it's a catcher, right? Yeah, you know.

Cardio's not my friend. We'll talk. We can figure something about that, I'm sure. Are you, you're a junior, right? Yes, I am. Okay, so it's too late for you to join the program official. Yes, it is. You are so consistent.

You are so consistent. You are so consistent. Yeah, man, I hope you guys are the videos just to see Nick's panic, like the full panic. Listen, it's not for everybody. There's exceptional and elite matter. It's a part of the process and the weeding process.

But I just have to say, I was always impressed by people, people who led for life, for life. This has been a life journey for you. This is not something that just happened for you, a purposeful journey, and now you're creating more superheroes. You're creating more leaders.

And it made me feel more comfortable. It made me able to relax knowing that you guys are out there. And the easiest way for me to say thank you is just to consistently say. Thank you for everything that you do. Thank you for all of that you do. And the sponsors of this hour of radio, I reached out and asked, you know, what can we do? And it's a little something. But this one's just from the folks at Beatrice's Bakery.

You and your lovely wife, the next time you guys are having. having dinner and you need dessert. All righty. tasty. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty remarkable. All right. It's pretty remarkable. So we'll do that.

When's the next game, folks? We'll see you and your crew out there working. Well, they're going to be out there this Saturday against Purdue. So if you see the guys in the orange vest, the girls in orange vest, be kind to them. They're there trying to keep everybody safe. It's not rest of the field and get them hurt or anything. Oh, it would be great to be able to rest of the field. The next four weeks.

Yeah, yeah, that's, there we go dreaming again. There we go dreaming again, you know. Any, your thoughts on the football season so far? As a leader. I guess we all seem to lead harder. No, I think like everybody else, it's not the season I think we expect it to be, but, you know, I know they're going to keep plugging. I think we're going to see a lot of good stuff.

We got the push-huster points crew. That's, again, you know, a mix of Army, Navy and Air Force. folks. Every time Nebraska scores, they go out and do pushups. Very point, the Northwestern game got a little tiring for them. Hopefully they're tired the rest of the season here. Let's hope for that. And we will be applauding you as well. I'm applauding them. Mark, thank you. Again, it means the world for you to make time to share the, let folks know if they want to get their people involved or their kids involved,

let them know how. Well, you can go to our website, unl.edu, slant, N-R-O-T-C, You know, the Army and the Air Force have the same thing with Army AAROTC or AFROTC. And they've got similar programs, you know, similar, you know, a bunch of really great kids. They just chose the wrong service to join. But they can do that. You know, they can come visits at the M&N building. So the corner of 14th and Vine just east of the stadium, you know, come see us. We're on the main floor on the east side.

Army's on the west side. And Air Force is up on the second floor. there's plenty of folks to be happy to talk to anybody who's interested in doing it. Captain, thank you, kind of sir. And thank you one more thing. I gave you a hat last time. You got to get a flight suit patch there. Oh, shut up.

The black shirt, there you go. What? The black shirts of defense. Oh, baby. I'm showing it on the video stream. Nick, pretty cool. And the football athletic department did give us a thumbs up on that. So copyright's good to go.

Wow. Thank you. Day made. Well done. That is Captain Mark Lake Camp. Good stuff all around. Again, greatly appreciate it. We'll toward the break more one-on-one when we come back.

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