Quick! What do strippers and lumberjacks have in common? Hint: "I see you winding and grinding up on that pole, I know you see me looking at you and you already know"
"Imma let you finish, Akon, but the Dartmouth Woodsmen are the best pole-dancers climbers of all time, ALL TIME!"
...still lost?
The Dartmouth Woodsmen, or Forestry team, competes in "classic lumberjack eventsthings like chopping, sawing, pole-climbing, log-rolling," explained Emily Kyker-Snowman '11, the team's co-captain.
You read that correctly: pole-climbing is a Forestry event. It is, however, a little different from what Akon had in mind. The pole is as tall as a telephone pole, and the harnessed climber uses spiked boots to climb to the top.
Dartmouth first established Forestry as a collegiate sport in 1947 with Woodsmen's Weekend, an annual intercollegiate competition now known as Spring Meet. Many schools host the meet, but it returns to the Dartmouth Green every three years.
Today, 12 New England colleges compete interscholastically in Men's, Women's and Jack-and-Jill events. Unlike in Canada where Forestry is a varsity sport, the Dartmouth team receives all of its funding from the DOC, according to team member Kodiak Burke '11. Distinct from a varsity or club sport, the Forestry team is actually a division within Cabin and Trail.
Some of the schools Dartmouth competes against, however, offer Forestry as an academic major. Although the team at UNH, for example, attracts students from myriad academic programs, Coach Chris Robarge believes that Forestry majors have a "unique insight into the wood aspect" of the events.
"[Forestry majors] handle the tools in educational courses, which can help them remain more relaxed when practicing than a political science major who's never picked up an axe before," Robarge said.
With neither an official coach nor a Forestry major, Dartmouth's team members are initially awkward when wielding a chainsaw, said political science major Ben Hughey '12
"No one [joins] the team with experience competing in timber sports," Hughey said, a member of the team since his freshman Winter.
Burke expressed similar sentiments, explaining that Dartmouth's team members are less physically adept than their competitors.
"We're not too good at the events requiring brute strength," Burke said. "Some [of our team members] are quite literally half the size of the people we compete against." Although the oldest team in forestry's collegiate history, Dartmouth's team mentality is more about having fun than fighting for first place in meets.
"To give an example [of our competitiveness], we like to say that we're unchallenged in the Ivy League," Hughey joked. "But that's because Colby College and Dartmouth are the only liberal arts schools that compete."
The team competes against Paul Smith's College of the Adirondacks, for example, which "has three majors, Hotel, Dining and Forestry," according to Hughey. He's only slightly exaggerating with around 850 undergraduates, academic departments include Hospitality Management; Science, Liberal Arts and Business; or Forestry, Natural Resources and Recreation.
Lucky for Dartmouth, the sport manifests itself as a competition not against other teams but instead "against the wood," according to Robarge.
"Your place as a competitor is to the study the wood, understand the wood, and beat the wood," he said.
According Ben, all of the events are based on practical skills historically employed by foresters. In the chainsaw disk stack, for example, competitors saw off successive disks from the top of a vertical log and receive points for the number of disks still balancing atop the log when time is called.
"The event probably originates from cutting down a tree in a lawn or residential neighborhood," Hughey said. "You can't simply fell it or else it'd fall on someone's house."
Hughey endearingly referred to the event as "Jenga with a chainsaw."
AJ Dupere, one of UNH's two coaches, similarly compared today's forestry competitions with contemporary rodeo exhibitions.
"For the most part people attend a rodeo inside an air-conditioned building and think it's still the Wild West," Dupere said. "[Woodsmen] events date back to the old lumberjack days but don't have much direct connection to it. No one today is living in the woods all winter, chopping and not seeing family for months at time."
A former member of the team from 1992 to 1997 and the team's coach ever since, Dupere studied Forestry as an undergraduate and later received his Masters in Education.
As for the historical origins of axe-throwing? Yes, we all live free or die in the good ol' Granite State, but I just don't see how brandishing axes fits into our state history.
"Axe-throw is not for practical purpose," Kyker-Snowman said, (un)fortunately alleviating my concern about the event's origins. "It comes from loggers who were sitting around campfire at night and had precision axe-throwing competitions for entertainment."
The Dartmouth woodsmen continue to throw axes, but they've found new ways of goofing around during meets. Although the "huge farmer boys" of other teams don t-shirts or Carhartt jackets, according to Hughey, the Dartmouth team sports flair.
Kyker-Snowman admits to having competed in the single-buck sawing event in a costume wedding dress. The single buck event involves one competitor handling a two-person, crosscut saw to make a single cookie, or cut a single disk out of a log.
"One of the co-captains Max [Bogran '10] is a big, bulky guy," Hughey said. "I mean, he's stockyand wears a princess tiara and a tutu to meets."
Dartmouth Woodsmen: positions available. No experience with saws, axes or logs necessary. Maybe corporate recruiters will follow suit?
In the meantime, UNH is hosting a meet on Saturday, Nov. 6, and has warmly invited the Dartmouth community to attend. Although the UNH team is "a bit more intense than Dartmouth," according to Dupere, feel free to wear a tutu.