HARRISBURG >> Two teams, both from Penn State, competed in the first ever Lumberjack and Lumberjill demonstrations during the 99th Pennsylvania State Farm Show at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg Sunday night.
Sponsored by the Pennsylvania Professional Lumberjack Organization, the competition tested the skills of the team members at the spring board, standing chop, underhand chop, axe throwing and cross-cut sawing using old logging techniques. The teams represented the main campus in State College and the branch campus at Mont Alto.
Travis Cunningham of Warren, who was on the State College team, said he grew up with the sport.
“My father competed in college and a little bit after he graduated from college. I always wanted to do it myself,” Cunningham said. “So, when I got to Penn State, I jumped right on it. I really love it.”
Cunningham also said the sport puts everyone on a level playing field when it comes to competition.
“It’s a really good stress reliever, and it’s also one of those sports where, while size and strength are definitely helpful, you can be a small guy and as long as you have technique, you can actually compete with the big dog,” he said.
One of the timers for the competition was Liz Simcox of Lock Haven, who also happened to be the state’s top Lumberjill last year. She started when she was about 12 years old under the direction of her father, Bill Simcox, current president of the Pennsylvania Professional Lumberjack Organization.
“My father started competing on the circuit the year I was born, so I was just around it and picked it up gradually,” Liz Simcox said. “A lot of the girls get their start on the woodsmen teams at the universities.”
Although the competition may seem like a man’s sport, Simcox said, it’s not difficult for a woman to do.
“It’s mostly technique,” she explained. “How you do it matters more than how hard you do it. If you do it right, it’ll work, whether you’re super strong or not.”
Simcox said she enjoys both the physical hard work and the mental planning it takes to be a lumberjack.
“When you’re chopping a block of wood, you have to know where you want to put your hip, how you want to put your hip, and if you mess up, do I fix it, or do I just keep going and catch it on the next round,” she said.
As the two teams were hard at chopping wood or throwing axes at a target, 9-year-old Brennen Slangan of South Gibson, Susquehanna County, tried his hand at chopping a block of wood on the side. His grandfather, Chip Arthur, cheered him with each chop of the axe. Brennen never gave up, and he did well, considering he was using a 5-pound axe, the same as the ones the competitors were using.
Brennen said it was hard work, “because you’re swinging a very heavy axe.”
He started learning the skills of the lumberjack about two years ago. “My grandpa got me into it,” he said.
“Last year and this year, he’s really been getting into it more,” Arthur said of his grandson. “It’s hard.”
Arthur said a co-worker at a sawmill where they both worked piqued his interest in lumberjack competitions. The two men went to a competition, and he was hooked, Arthur said.
“I sat there and watched them in the crowd and thought I could do as (well as) some of the guys in the competition, and now I have my daughter and my grandsons into it,” he said.