By MATT CHITTUM
ROANOKE TIMES

To the VMI students who endure it - and to those who already have, who encourage yet make it tough on those going through it this year - a chilling climb up a steep wall of mud represents in a way the core of the corps' allure: the right to say, "I made it!"

Angela "Nikki" Myers' eyes and teeth blazed white in her mud-covered face when she smiled. "I made it," she said weakly, to no one in particular. She threw her arms languidly into the air.

Minutes earlier, she was slithering through an icy quagmire with her classmates in the first coed class in the history of Virginia Military Institute.

Myers was among the first 23 women ever to endure the muddy ritual known as "Breakout" - a half-hour belly crawl up an impossibly saturated and impossibly vertical wall of mud at the back of the campus. At its summit: liberty. The end of the rigors of the "ratline" training regimen designed to strip them of their trappings and leave their bare character - no more "straining," or walking and standing at attention, no more pushups or sleepless nights or screaming seniors.

About 1:45 p.m., Myers became the first woman in the school's 158-year history to taste that freedom. Blind as newborn pups from the mud, and almost as weak from an all-night march, Myers and her classmates dragged themselves through an oozy mess at the bottom of the hill. The women were barely distinguishable among their brother rats, their gender obscured by the mud. The rats' cadet big brothers taunted them, shoved mud down the backs of their shirts, even dragged them backward by the legs, as they neared the hill they must climb to freedom. Myers, of Virginia Beach, was the first to reach the bottom of the hill. She reached the top in a line of male freshman rats who forced one another upward, each one pushing and being pushed in return. Like the ratline as a whole, breakout forces the rats to bond in the face of adversity. But beyond the first hill was the junior class, another smaller hill, the sophomore class, and a trench brimming with more icy water. As in the ratline itself, each class at first resists the rats, and then embraces them. Myers laid a muddy hug on her cadet mentor, senior Al Lester, who told her he was proud of her. "Thank you," was the only response she could muster.

"She's a Myers," said her father, John Myers, who was one of the first blacks to join the Marine Corps in 1942. Breaking barriers, he said, "is a Myers family business."

Myers was soon followed up the hill by the remaining 22 of the 30 women who entered VMI on Aug. 18. One was suspended and six dropped out along the way, the most recent less than a week ago. Of the 430 men who enrolled, 361 remain.

"Wooooohoooo!" the survivors hollered at the top of the hill, like cowboys giddy from a good bull ride.

Alexis Abrams of Alexandria took tiny Ebony McElroy of Lake Forest, Calif., in a bear hug and lifted her off the ground before the pair retreated into a heated tent.

Others lingered outside, posing for photos.

"I'm cold," said a shivering Yulia Beltikova of Krasnodar, Russia, her hands balled into fists against the chill. Other rats quaked to their knees.

"Move your fingers," they were told. "Y'all have to move your fingers."

The bitter cold of last week delayed Breakout once, out of fear of hypothermia. Though the temperature never escaped the 30s Monday, no cases of hypothermia were reported, only a few cuts and abrasions.

The final rat test had been scheduled for Friday, already much later than in past years. The class of 2001 endured the ratline longer than any class since 1990.

The ritual was rescheduled for Monday at 1 p.m., but the beginning of the end had come around midnight, when the rats were rousted for a "forced march" through Rockbridge County, led by Superintendent Josiah Bunting III.

"It was nice. Around 5 a.m. it began to snow heavily," he said cheerfully, standing at the top of Breakout Hill. He was covered with mud after an embrace from his son Charlie, who also completed the ratline Monday.

Behind Bunting, the last of the women cleared the hill. Natasha Miller of Arlington leaned heavily on her cadet big brother, Mark Glancy, who helped toward a drink of water.

Another cadet gently swabbed muck from her ears.

A few minutes later, Miller stood in a nearby parking lot while athletic trainer Mary Ubinger hosed the mud from her camouflage outfit. "Now I know how my mom felt when I used to come home muddy from the sandbox," Miller said.

"Now I know how your mom felt," Ubinger said.

After a hot shower and a change of clothes later, the class gathered in the barracks courtyard. Bunting stood on a stoop above them and told them VMI's system is "still the toughest and the best adversative system of any military college in the world." He congratulated them for joining "the long gray line of VMI's men, and women."

Senior Class President Kevin Trujillo led the rats in the "Old Yells," cheers for each of the upper classes. Then came the cheer for the rats' own class, the final step in becoming full-fledged cadets.

"How sweet it is," Trujillo said. "Henceforth, you will not strain. That is not a privilege of yours anymore."

And then Trujillo spoke the magic words that would send them to a world of privileges: radios in their rooms, trips into town and calling seniors by their first names.

"You are released," he said.