GREAT LAKES (NNS) – Seaman Henry Allen graduated as the top Sailor from Recruit Training Command (RTC) Great Lakes, earning the Military Excellence Award (MEA) Oct. 15, 2026.

Allen, 23, of Mooresville, North Carolina, said the award belonged as much to his division as it did to him.

“Winning the Military Excellence Award meant a lot, especially after how challenging boot camp turned out to be,” Allen said. “My division earned Hall of Fame honors, and pushing everyone to reach that was a stressful thing to take on. I might be the one who received the award, but I’d be nowhere without my shipmates. Every bit of this was a team effort, and they carried me as much as I carried them.”

The Military Excellence Award is presented to the recruit who best demonstrates enthusiasm, devotion to duty, military bearing and teamwork throughout training. As part of the recognition, recipients receive a flag letter of commendation.

A year earlier, Allen had been on a very different path. A finance and capitalism studies graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, he spent his senior year preparing for law school and interning at a criminal defense firm.

“I was all in on law school. I’d immersed myself in the applications and was interning at a criminal defense firm in Charlotte,” Allen said. “The work was interesting, but somewhere in the middle of it I realized I wanted a serious change. I wanted a path that would force me to push past my limits, not just sit behind a desk. So I started the process of joining the Navy right after I finished my degree.”

The push past those limits came faster than he expected. In the first weeks of training, his division was struggling and needed new leadership, and Allen was encouraged to step forward by a shipmate who saw something in him.

“I owe a lot to my friend, Seaman Nicholas Winsor,” Allen said. “He’s the one who pushed me to volunteer for the recruit chief petty officer role and lead from the front. Our division needed leadership, so a few of us stepped into those positions to make those changes that were needed.”

Guiding that turnaround meant leaning on the example set by his first RDC, Chief Petty Officer Volker Weishuhn.

“Chief Weishuhn was a strong role model for me and the whole division,” Allen said. “His competitive attitude and the relentless way he advocated for us was more motivation than we ever could have asked for. He made you want to earn it.”

As recruit chief petty officer, Allen discovered that the hardest part of boot camp wasn’t the physical demands or the schedule. It was people.

“The toughest part for me was figuring out what drove each recruit in my division,” Allen said. “These were men who all joined for different reasons, with different strengths and weaknesses that came out over the weeks. Learning how to get each one to perform his best for an evolution was difficult, but it was the most rewarding thing I did while I was here.”

The foundation for that leadership, he said, was laid in college, though not in the classroom.

“Getting my degree prepared me well, and not in an academic way,” Allen said. “It taught me how to step out of my comfort zone and do what needed to be done. Public speaking, problem solving, governing myself. Those are the lessons I leaned on most here.”

His RDCs were Chief Petty Officer Volker Weishuhn, Petty Officer 1st Class Sean Nicolls and Petty Officer 1st Class Marcos Reyes.

Following graduation, Allen will head to San Diego, California, for additional training.

Training at RTC is approximately nine weeks long, and all enlistees in the U.S. Navy begin their careers at the command. More than 40,000 recruits train annually at the Navy’s only boot camp.