UNR team wins Tahoe MedWAR challenge

Twelve teams of four racers navigated through various physical activities and completed wilderness medical scenarios in Tahoe last month.

MedWAR, which stands for Medical Wilderness Adventure Race, is designed for participants with or without a medical background. For the Tahoe Challenge, participants varied from local adventurers, medical students from URN and Stanford University, and five teams from Arizona.

Volunteer victims acted out wilderness medical scenarios designed to teach and test each team on their wilderness survival and medical skills. A sampling of the scenarios included an ATV accident, a lightning strike, and an avalanche victim buried in the sand.

Team Med Students Gone Wild from UNR School of Medicine were the champions. All teams completed the race within 10½ hours.

Winners were:

• First place: Med Students Gone Wild – UNR (Jenna Johnson, Austin Meng, Patrick Mullett, and Robert Shrake)
• Second: Team H2UP (Jenn Drennan, Emma Dayberry, Chris Kozlowski, and Caitlin Robinson)
• Third: Team EPI (William Gray Grandy, Jeff Koeck, Morgan Machen, and TJ Middlemis-Clark)
• Fourth: Peumothorax x 4 (Brooke Myatt, Andrew Odland, Kevin Robinson, and Jeremy Vandehurt).

The MedWAR Tahoe Challenge is hosted by Barton Health, Tahoe Center for Orthopedics, and Tahoe Emergency Physicians.