MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The West Virginia University Mine Rescue team continues to stand out on both a national and international level.
WVU Director of Mining and Industrial Extension Josh Brady announced that the team has once again won the Intercollegiate Mine Emergency Rescue Development competition, making it the third straight time the team has won the event. With the most recent win at the competition in Colorado, the Statler College mine rescue team, consisting of experts and eight students from multiple disciplines, now boasts four national wins and three consecutive international victories.
“We’re trying to make their life a little brighter and give them skills to take off into the professional world, and we hate to brag about it, but we’re pretty successful at it,” said Brady.
According to Brady, the team is trained with the help of trainers Randy Clark, John Helmick, Brian Malott, and Sean Rhodes, who bring decades of expertise in the field as well as an expansive training site that allows for students to simulate the actual operations of an underground mine. What is called the Edgar Experimental Mine, students are able to react to situations that have historically taken place in mine collapses or explosions and determine how to find missing miners, administer first aid, and perform high-angle rope rescues, among other skills tested as part of the intercollegiate competition.
“We do the best we can to mimic what that emotion, and we’ll just say fear, would be like,” said Brady on WAJR’s Talk of the Town. “You try to create it in them so they learn how to deal with an emergency in a training session,” he said.
The WVU Mine Rescue Team earned first place in four categories as part of the competition, including the team mine rescue exercise, the smoke maze, the individual BG-4 bench, and the individual 240-R bio bench. This 2025 competition included a half dozen teams from the United States as well as teams from Canada and Germany. With the WVU Mine Rescue Team being the only to place in the mine rescue category since other teams exceeded the exercise’s time limit, Brady said they found time to help others so skills they learned can be applied in other parts of the country.
“We outwork everybody, and it’s not that the rest of the groups that we’re competing against aren’t talented enough to do it,” said Brady. “We actually try to coach them up when we’re at the banquet as well and help the rest of these young kids,” he said.
For the accomplishments achieved by the WVU Mine Rescue Team, Brady credits both his fellow trainers as well as the just over half dozen students who took part in the 2025 Intercollegiate Mine Emergency Rescue Development competition. This includes a combination of mining, electrical, and mechanical engineering students who trained for several months ahead of the competition. With three straight wins in an international competition, Brady is proud of what has been accomplished with the WVU Mine Rescue Team.
“If you show up with them (the rescue team trainers), three days a week, and you simply do what they tell you to do, you will come home with the hardware, it’s that simple,” said Brady.