University of Washington Logging Sports

The University of Washington had a logging sports team for many years until it was disbanded in the early 1970's. During the 1996-7 school year a small group of Forest Management students decided to get a team together to compete at the 58^th annual Association of Western Forest Clubs (AWFC) Conclave at Oregon Stat University at Corvallis.

Designed to be equally competitive and educational the annual Conclave brings many schools from throughout the western US together. The host school runs tours and seminars about forestry in their area followed by logging sports competitions. The competition includes the same events as professional logging shows, with the exception of tree topping, plus hard hit chopping, pulp toss, caber toss, limber pole and technical events. These technical events include skills which foresters need: timber cruising, tree identification, wood identification, traverse and fire building. All events are open to men and women alike.

For the 1997 Conclave the UW team traveled to OSU with whatever saws, axes and equipment they could scrape together. They competed hard but when the competition was over and the scores tallied the UW team was beaten by a 1-woman team from Washington State University.

Each year at Conclave schools bid for the right to host the coming year's Conclave. Even though the majority of the team members were graduating a bid was made by the UW representatives to the AWFC to host the 59^th annual Conclave at Pack Forest, near Eatonville, WA, in 1998. After the vote UW was chosen to host the 1998 Conclave. With the team only a year old and without competition grounds or coaches the work was on to raise money, build a logging sports arena, and find trainers.

Hosting Conclave is a huge undertaking. Three days of tours need to be organized, including transportation, competition grounds need to be readied, suitable competition wood must be found, and awards procured. Typically 100-150 competitors are involved in the competition and tours. During the 6 months prior to the 1998 Conclave the Forest Club and Logging Sports Team, through many hours of hard work, the generosity of companies, individuals, the University of Washington College of Forest Resources, and University of Washington's Pack Forest, was able to construct a logging sports arena at Pack Forest outside Eatonville, WA, including 2 - 60' spar poles, and raise over $20,000 to make Conclave possible.

After the whipping the UW Logging Sports Team received at Conclave '97 lost of training was needed to be competitive. Beginning with the 1998 season three people from the ranks of the American Lumberjack Association, Dane Marbut and Ed "Mooch" Smith, both world-class climbers, past champions and record holders, and Gordon Mauhl, past president of the American Lumberjack Association and former world champion, volunteered their time and some of their equipment to train the team. With the huge amount of time these three put into training the team their performance increased dramatically. At Conclave '98 they took 5^th out of 12 teams while putting on the show!

The trend continued in 1999. The began the season by hosting a one-day show at Pack Forest where they took second place behind the always powerful team from Flathead Valley Community College at Kalispell, MT. It was a very close match with the third place team from Oregon State University having half the point of the UW team and the FVCC team winning by only 20 points. Chasing FVCC continued through the rest of the season. At Conclave 1999, hosted by CalPoly - San Luis Obispo, and shows hosted by Spokane Community College, FVCC, and University of Idaho - Moscow the UW team consistently took second place behind FVCC, where logging sports is a varsity sport.

The success of the team through the team through the 1999 was due to the hard work of the team members training and raising all the money, through donations from companies and individuals and activities such as Christmas tree, firewood and t-shirt sales, needed to put on a show and travel to California, Montana, Idaho and eastern Washington to compete, and the coaching and equipment use donated by our trainers Gordy Mauhl, Mooch Smith and Dane Marbut.

Heading into the 2000 season the team is up against the same obstacles: equipment and money. Coaches can only donate so much time and equipment sees a lot of wear and tear. None of our coaches are affiliated in any way with the University of Washington; they just wish to help keep the sport they love going. There has been no funding available for coaches. Our head Gordy Mauhl has taken time off work to train the team twice a week and attend shows on weekends through the spring. These costs add up. An estimate of the costs to Gordy for the 1999 season is $8,000. The saws used in AWFC competitions are the same old peg-and-raker saws used before chainsaws. These must be factory made, have not been in production for many years, and to purchase a saw suitable for competition can be very expensive. Chopping axes are not the ones you find in the local hardware store. They a specially built racing axes made in New Zealand and Australia, which sell for nearly $400 each. Climbing requires spurs, a belt and flipline. This setup typically runs nearly $300. Other events, such as choker race and obstacle pole, require caulked shoes or boots. Some competitors have caulked boot for working in the woods or they buy soccer shoes and have them caulked. Caulking soccer shoes runs $50 plus the shoes. Currently the UW team has only two saws and a pair of climbing spurs. The individual competitors or the coaches have provided the remainder of the equipment. At the end of March we are planning on having another show at Pack Forest. Last year it cost nearly $3000 for a one-day event. This year we are planning a 2-day event, which should be at least as expensive.

Once more we will have to rely almost solely on fundraising by the team to make the season possible. This is a rare case in the AWFC. We are not an official team at the University of Washington but, rather, an arm of the Forest Club in the College of Forest Resources. Many of the teams are well supported by their colleges. Spokane Community College pays all travel costs for their team and provides a per diem amount to help cover food. Flathead Valley Community College recognizes logging sports as a varsity sport. Competitors are eligible for scholarships and come from a variety of majors and the team is very well equipped. These two factors have lead to their dominance of the AWFC for the past few years.

Some schools in the AWFC have had a hard time keeping their teams going due to political pressures. In areas such as Seattle where the environmental movement is running rampant logging and anything to do with logging is very politically unpopular. Thus logging sports is seen as another aspect of "raping the forest" which some schools want nothing to do with. The result of this is pressure to disband logging sports teams. But, what is not realized is that logging built the urban areas and the population continues to use a large amount of forest products. Logging sports seeks to keep alive the traditions and skills of the brave souls who worked in the woods felling and bucking gigantic trees with nothing more than strong bodies and strong wills. This should be supported and allowed to thrive. Rather than trying to eliminate connections to the past, which some groups do not approve of, logging sports should be looked at as a connection to our collective past, which built our current society to what it is today.

The University of Washington team has made a big impact with their improvement. Our success has prompted Washington State University to start their team again. Now heading into their second year they may be a force to be reckoned with. At a meeting of representatives of all the forestry schools in the US the UW representative was talking with the representative from CalPoly who could not say enough about how impressed we was with the performance of the UW team at Conclave '99. What impressed him most was their ability to handle the saws and axes with such skill that is seldom seen and not taught in colleges. Through hard work and excellent training the team has become a very positive representative of the University of Washington College of Forest Resources and the University itself.