The 2024 winners of the 17th Lt. Gen. Robert B. Flowers Best Sapper Competition are Capts. Matthew Cushing and Joseph Palazini, from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky — making history not only as the first team to win the competition twice, but also back-to-back.
The winning duo was named during an award ceremony April 23 in Nutter Field House.
Both Cushing and Palazini serve as company commanders with the 21st Brigade Engineer Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team.
According to Cushing, Best Sapper is a meaningful title that comes with great responsibility.
“I command troops. I have to show them what a Best Sapper looks like, how to become one and how we never stop trying to improve ourselves. That is the biggest reason I am back this year, to try to inspire more Best Sappers.”
Placing second was 1st Lt. Eric Niino and Master Sgt. Ivan Varela, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Fort Moore, Georgia.
Third place went to Cadets Samuel Dickerson and Isaiah McNeilly from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York.
The competition, which took place April 19 through 23 at Fort Leonard Wood, featured 50 two-man teams that competed in several events, included special steel cutting, mountaineering, a wire obstacle breach, marksmanship, timber cutting techniques, bridge reconnaissance, utilizing handheld mine detectors and a Bangalore breach. In 2005, the Army Engineer Regiment launched the inaugural Best Sapper Competition to showcase the regiment's elite Sapper leaders.
