West Point cadet ready to be leader

Freshman year at the United States Military Academy at West Point tends to thin the pool of cadets looking to make a splash among the ranks of the U.S. military. Of the 10,000 who apply to the school, about 1,200 are accepted, and hundreds of those won't make their sophomore year.

As 2006 Whitefish High School graduate Chase Giacomo explains, "It's a pressure cooker."

Now in his final year at the elite New York military school, Giacomo has survived the trials and tribulations of Academy life — and that arduous first semester.

"Your freshman year is a little different," he explained while home on spring break. "You're not allowed to speak outside of your room unless you're in a classroom or you're spoken to. You cup your hands when you walk, you have to walk on the outside of the walls and you have to greet all the upperclassmen.

"It's a tough place to be. You go from the top notch at Whitefish High School and you're the senior, you're playing sports, you're loving your freedom, and then you go (to West Point) and you're reminded of who you are and you get put at the bottom rung."

Yet, Giacomo says, that first year is what separates future graduates from those who may be in the Academy half-heartedly.

"A lot of kids get stressed out and leave and find out it's not for them," he said. "That's good, too, because you don't want leaders in the Army that can't handle that pressure or more. Imagine Afghanistan or Iraq."

When Giacomo graduates from the Academy this summer, he'll be commissioned as a second lieutenant and posted to Fort Lewis, Wash., in the field artillery branch. Soon after, he will likely be deployed overseas as a leader on the front lines of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

At 23 years old, he says the challenges of the Academy have fully prepared him to be a leader and for what he might encounter at war.

"When you're a freshman you're like, 'Whoa! War?' he said. "As a senior, you see the bigger picture and you're like, 'I'm ready to lead.'"

Giacomo says he doesn't want to go to war, but he's prepared and ready.

"It's a duty that I feel like a lot of people before me have served, and I'm honored to do that," he said.

The Academy breaks down each cadet's schooling into three parts — military and physical programs and academics. It was tough for Giacomo to find a balance between the three, saying, "There's not a lot of time for sleep."

He reminisced about one particular experience in the military program where he had to complete a survival-swimming course.

"One of the tests was in a wave pool," he explained. "It's dark, they have machine gun sounds going, there's rain, and you have a bunch of gear on."

To pass the test, cadets had to fall backward into the water, fully geared up, and swim out to a buoy where they removed and inflated their pants for a flotation device.

"It's terrifying," he said. "The last thing you want to do with a bunch of gear on is fall backward into a wave pool when it's dark and there's a strobe light going."

Giacomo passed the test and says that it's an experience he can always draw from when his limits are pushed.

"You call to the past and say, 'I thought I was going to drown and I thought I was going to fail,'" he said. "It shifts your mind from 'Can I do this?' to 'How do I do this?'"

But the Academy isn't all about physical and military training. There's a tough academic side, too.

Giacomo is a legal studies major and may eventually go into politics. The Academy afforded him the opportunity to study abroad at both the United Nations offices in Switzerland and in the Ukraine, where he studied Russian for a semester.

He says his experience in the Ukraine not only enhanced his second language, but also broadened his global perspective.

"It was really poverty stricken, and corruption was rampant," he said. "I was carrying a baton to school for a while because the dogs would run in packs. You were down there in the Wild West."

He lived in an apartment with a 62-year-old Ukraine woman, Tatiana, and became fully immersed in the Russian language.

"I see Russia as a growing nation and a big power out there," he said about deciding to study Russian. "I figure a lot of people in the states are going to speak Spanish. I wanted to learn a language that would be different and useful somewhere."

While most graduates from the Academy go straight into their mandatory five-years of military service, Giacomo is in the running for the East West Scholarship, which would allow him to postpone his active duties while he obtains his master's degree. He is one of four candidates in the world being considered for the scholarship.

As for any up and coming Whitefish graduates who may be interested in applying to the Academy, Giacomo warns that, "It's got to be for you."

"It's got to be aligned with what you feel called to do," he said. "And you have to understand that it's not easy. You will be pushed, stretched and challenged in almost every way."