Port McNeill Logger Sports returned to the waterfront for the ninth year in a row, once again featuring local talent going head to head against competitors from all over Canada to see who’s the best at chopping, sawing, throwing axes, and much, much more.
Hyde Creek’s Allison Briscoe and her sister Dawn Briscoe have been competing at Port McNeill Logger Sports events for five years now, and they love seeing all the support from the fans who come out to cheer the athletes on year after year.
“I go to school here, all my friends live here — Port McNeill is really a part of my community,” said Allison, adding, “It’s always great to see the crowd come out and show support for us.”
Dawn agreed, stating her favourite part of the event is “Seeing familiar faces in the crowd and watching people cheer on the locals.”
This year saw a rise in female competitors, which meant the organizers were able to offer the ladies the same amount of categories to compete in as the men.
Allison said she thinks it’s great to see, because “for a couple years there wasn’t too many ladies competing, but now there’s lots of ladies getting into it and now there’s some shows with even more ladies competing than men.”
The Briscoe sisters will be travelling to upcoming Logger Sports shows all throughout the summer until September.
For Nick Russell, one of the seven directors for the Port McNeill Logger Sports Society, he spends a lot of his free time organizing things behind the scenes to make sure the competition runs smoothly the day of, and is also in charge of tallying up the final results on how the competitors performed.
Russell is also an active competitor, with his favourite events being “The grand prairie accuracy cut because it’s very mental and fast, and the underhand chop because I love cutting a piece of wood in half.”
Russell was pleased to see another enthusiastic local crowd show up to support the athletes, and he thanked the competitors who “travelled a long way to come support us and support this proud community we’ve got, it’s great to see.”
Sointula’s Dan Knapp has been a professional logger for 30 years now and has been competing at Logger Sports since 2014. His best event is the axe throw, which he won in 2016, “and I’m hoping to win it again this year, so I can be bumped up to pro,” he laughed, adding his job as a logger actually helps him train for the events.
“It’s the old traditional ways of logging that inspire me… I want to say a thank you to all the fans, the organizers — it’s a great family outing and a great time in general for the community.”
See next week’s Gazette for more coverage of Logger Sports.
