Joe Tobias raised his axe above his head and launched it, soaring 20 feet through the air, and watched as it stuck right in the middle of the bull’s-eye.

Tobias thought he would finish in the top three, earning points for his team, but instead he finished first overall in the axe throw. His teammates won second and third in the event as well.

‘It’s pretty much all about timing and your release,’ said the junior construction management major at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. ‘Then it’s about the speed, because you can over rotate, and the blade doesn’t hit right. You just try to memorize where you let it go.’

The target had a bull’s-eye, which counts for five points, and rings that range from three points to one. Tobias slotted 12 points, scoring two bull’s-eyes en route to the victory.

The ESF woodsmen team won 10 events at Saturday’s timber sports competition, helping the men’s and women’s teams beat out Penn State Mont Alto, SUNY Cobleskill, Paul Smith’s College and Finger Lakes Community College to take home the overall prize in the competition.

‘It was real good to win because Paul Smith’s College is pretty much our rival,’ Tobias said. ‘They’ve beaten us in the last two competitions we had. Last time they beat us by one point.’

The woodsmen team is a student club funded with the student activity fee. Athletes compete in events similar to those seen on ESPN’s ‘Great Outdoor Games.’

Along with axe throwing, competitors take part in cross-cutting (two-man saw), log rolling (ran in pairs), pulp tossing (a team relay where pulp logs are thrown), bowsaw (one man saw), packboard (relay with a pack on the back) and many others.

The club practices on Mondays and Thursdays from 7 to 9 p.m. and competes in meets against other woodsmen teams in the Northeast. Usually three or four competitions are held each semester.

Ian Freeburg, the team’s vice president, said one event that turned the tide was the cross-cut event. Paul Smith’s usually wins the event, but a minor change before the start put the ESF team over the top, Freeburg said.

‘We switched out one of our saws, and we went to a different one, and it worked out for us,’ the junior forest resource management major said. ‘It was the same kind of saw, but a little bit lighter, a little bit faster.’

Freeburg also said an event he and another teammate performed in gave the team some breathing room. The team vertical chop was a relay with two athletes on each team in which competitors chopped at a log, much like they would to chop down a tree. Freeburg’s team won by at least one minute over every other team.

‘That was a blowout right there,’ Freeburg said. ‘That put us ahead by a lot in points.’

While the ESF woodsmen team is still celebrating its victory, it must now move on to prepare for the big event that is coming later this month. On April 19 and 20, the team will be traveling to Dartmouth to compete in the spring meet.

The event will be much larger in size than the Syracuse meet and will have much more importance for the competitors.

‘That’s kind of like the Super Bowl for woodsmen events.’ Freeburg said. ‘It’s just going to be a big event. It’s going to be exciting.’

Published on April 1, 2007 at 12:00 pm