Best Warrior at Camp Rilea: Inside the Oregon National Guard’s Toughest Annual Competition
Photo: Oregon National Guard / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Each spring, Oregon National Guard members travel to Camp Rilea Armed Forces Training Center on the coast just south of Warrenton for the state’s Best Warrior Competition. The event picks the Guard’s top junior enlisted member and top noncommissioned officer of the year. It has been held at Camp Rilea for years, including this weekend competition announced on this site in March 2012.
What competitors face
Best Warrior is an Army National Guard competition, and in recent years Oregon Air National Guard Airmen have been invited too. Over about three days, competitors are tested on:
- Physical fitness, with a formal fitness test
- Marksmanship, including rifle qualification and a multi-weapon “3-gun” event
- Land navigation by map and compass across Camp Rilea’s dunes and forest
- An obstacle course
- A long ruck march, recently 12 miles, often partly on the beach
- Review boards, where senior enlisted leaders question competitors on military knowledge and bearing
- Written exams and simulated battlefield tasks, such as call-for-fire tests
The North Coast’s late-winter weather is part of the challenge. Guard public affairs coverage regularly notes that at least one of the three days brings rain.
Recent results
The 2025 competition, held March 12 to 14, drew 18 competitors from units around the state. In 2026, 22 competitors took part from March 19 to 21. Oregon Guard and Air National Guard reports list Senior Airman Colton Edezey of the 173rd Fighter Wing as winner of the junior enlisted tier and Staff Sgt. Eric Stanfill-Prael as Noncommissioned Officer of the Year. Winners advance to a regional competition and can then compete nationally.
About Camp Rilea
Camp Rilea sits between U.S. 101 and the Pacific south of Warrenton. The Oregon Military Department runs it as a training center for the Guard, active-duty and reserve units, and for civilian agencies including law enforcement and emergency responders. Its ranges, beach and forest terrain make it one of the main training sites in the Northwest. Because live-fire training is regular, people living near the camp sometimes hear range activity.
Sources
- Oregon National Guard Public Affairs and DVIDS coverage of the 2025 and 2026 Oregon Best Warrior Competitions
- Air National Guard, “Rising to the Challenge,” 2026
- The Astorian, “ONG finds the ‘Best Warrior’ at Camp Rilea,” March 2026
This article replaces a brief event notice originally published at this address in March 2012.
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