Young Colony grad sets ‘high bar’ in the Army

PALMER — At 23, Bridger Van Ness is already an Army Ranger.

Becoming a Ranger is something that soldiers traditionally do later on in their enlisted careers, often in their late 20s or early 30s. In fact, Van Ness is the first soldier ever to go straight from what the army calls “one station training” — basic training coupled with advanced individual training — into Ranger School. He was part of a pilot project to identify young soldiers who have the skills, intelligence and maturity to handle Ranger training.

“You see Ranger stuff everywhere and you say, ‘oh wow, that guy’s a ranger, that’s pretty cool,’” Van Ness said. “That attracted me to be a part of an elite unit. That’s what I wanted to do.”

A Colony High graduate and soccer standout, he said that he’s known the military was going to be his path from a very young age. He grew up next door to state Sen. Charlie Huggins, who was himself an Army Ranger.

“I always wanted to join the Army to do something for this country,” he said.

His mother, Margie Van Ness, agreed that her son has wanted to be a soldier for a very long time. She said he cemented that feeling at Norwich University in Vermont.

“For four years in a military college, he decided that was a career path he wanted to get into,” she said.

Of the Ranger training, she said, “I’m a very proud mom.”

Van Ness has been written about in The Bayonet & Saber, the newspaper for Fort Benning, in Georgia, which reported:

“Col. Bill Butler, deputy commandant for the U.S. Army Infantry School, said the Infantry School started an initiative to add more Rangers into the force, especially in brigade combat teams.

“‘Our brigade combat teams are only manned at 20 percent of all the Ranger requirements, and the greatest shortage on Ranger requirements is at the sergeant level and below,’ he said. ‘That has been an issue since the war started in 2001, and something we’ve been trying to address.’”

Butler also had great things to say about Van Ness in particular.

“He set a very high bar, so hopefully he will be able to motivate some of his peers when he shows up and tells them the only formal training he had was one station unit training,” Butler told the Fort Benning paper.

Van Ness is in Wasilla for another few days, and then his next stop is another bit of training at Fort Benning. After that, he’s on to Vincenza, Italy.

“A lot of interesting things are happening over in Europe. So I’m sure there will be nothing but a lot of interesting things for me to do over there,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.