HAMILTON — Brayden Lanser has dozens of medals and ribbons recognizing his athletic excellence — from youth baseball and wrestling to high school football and track and field.
But the award he received this summer might trump them all.
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The 17-year-old Hamilton High School senior recently completed basic training with the Army at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri and was bestowed the Iron Soldier award, which recognizes the highest-scoring solider on the Army Combat Fitness Test.
"You show how many pushups you can do, how much you can deadlift, how much you can sprint, drag and carry, how much you can do a plank and then how fast you can run," Lanser said.
Lanser said he did 70 pushups in two minutes, three repetitions of 350 pounds in the deadlift and the sprint-drag-carry in 1 minute, 23 seconds, as well as planked for 3 minutes, 40 seconds and ran two miles in 10 minutes, 40 seconds.
He was one of the youngest soldiers in the company, but the grind of basic training wasn't really anything new for the uber-disciplined student-athlete.
"He's got a good core inside him," said JR Lanser, Brayden's father. "He's not like any other kid to where he wants to do those bad things or anything like that. He's very well-disciplined."
Lanser's schedule is no joke. He's up early to lift weights before school. This year's class schedule includes AP Calculus, AP Government and Spanish 4 after he finished AP Biology, AP Humanities, AP Language and Composition and Spanish 3 last year.
After school, he has football practice, and then it's ranch work and raising his 4-H steer.
"With all the AP classes, it's really hard to balance out football. And then 4-H and leadership and just coming home, then I also work on a ranch, so there's just a lot of aspects that you have to work with," Lanser said. "Luckily, I have my family to help me, but at the end of the day, it's still my work."
He does all this in pursuit of attending the United States Military Academy West Point. A spot is hard to come by and is by no means guaranteed, but he's helped by his 4.0 grade-point average, role as student body president and participation in various clubs and sports.
He's an all-state track athlete and ran a leg on the Broncs' 1,600-meter relay team, which placed second at the Class A state track and field meet in May and set the school record time of 3 minutes, 24.0 seconds. In football, he's a running back and linebacker at Hamilton.
"I think he loves the game of football," Hamilton coach Bryce Carver said. "He loves playing, he loves being around his teammates and his friends. He is serious and pretty straightforward with things, but when he gets to play, he does have fun."
"Just the environment of the team, for sure," Lanser said when asked what he loves about football. "Everyone has a different personality. ... It just creates this really cool environment."
Lanser missed the start of football practices while at basic training, so he wasn't eligible for the Broncs' first two games of the season — wins over Ronan and Whitefish — but he was still voted a team captain by his peers.
"To get voted (captain) two years now has been a big testament to him," said Carver, who added that Lanser will return to the Broncs' lineup for their homecoming game against Libby on Sept. 12. "As coaches, we always don't see what goes on in the back side of things, and so that shows that the kids really did trust him and believed he would be a good leader for our team."
"We have a thing in the Army called leadership — loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage," Lanser said. "If you show those throughout life, you'll just make it anywhere, and that's just what I've been following."
Nominate a student-athlete to featured in the Class Act series by emailing scores@montanasports.com. Include their name, where they go to school, what sports they participate in and how they're excelling outside the arena.
