Sisters lumberjack is a repeat champion

The forecast called for a flurry of snowflakes and woodchips in the Rockies when Sisters' celebrity lumberjack, David Green, took up his axe to vie for a return as champion at the 2010 Stihl Timbersports Western Collegiate Challenge, held March 19 at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.

ESPN's university channel, ESPNU, captured the event for a future telecast. Green triumphed for a second year in a row amid solid competition and the ire of Old Man Winter.

The series gathers together the most skilled collegiate lumberjacks and matches them head-to-head in four professional disciplines: Single buck; standing block chop; stock saw; and the underhand chop. Green earned a $1,000 scholarship from Stihl for his school, and advances to the Stihl Timbersports Collegiate Championship, held this summer in Salem, Oregon.

"Colorado was great," said Green, wolfing down a pizza and reliving the victory. "I liked the whole younger college atmosphere and the scenery. The first thing I noticed when I got there is that the majority of the trees are cottonwood and my favorite wood to chop. I thought I'd love to live here because I would have a never-ending supply of great wood."

Green overcame a painful injury on the final day of competition at Stihl's 2009 Western Collegiate Challenge in Humboldt County, California, to win the regional title. He went on to the finals in Columbus, Georgia, last June, eventually finishing a disappointing fourth due partially to his shoulder not being 100 percent.

"Last year, I finished my standing block chop, and my axe got caught in the wood as I severed the log, and pulled my arm out of my socket," Green recalled. "It hurt a lot. I ended up with a subluxation of the shoulder. I barely continued through the rest of the events and fought through the pain and fortunately came out victorious. I came all this way and couldn't let it end badly.

"This year my arm felt great the last five months and allowed me to train harder than I was able to in the past. I'm 15 pounds heavier than my competition weight in 2009. I started working out every day and luckily have a great wife (Thanittha) that can cook. I eat a lot of rice and beef and pork. Lots of Thai food. The best dish she makes is spicy yellow curry with red bell pepper."

Green was pitted against many of the same faces from last year, including his main competition, Colorado State's own madman Adrian Flygt, chopping on his own Colorado turf.

"We're good friends and get along great, which in some cases is hard because it's easier to not like the one you're competing against," Green said. "But Flygt struggled bigtime this year due to an eye injury last year that made it hard for him to train. He was definitely not in top form for this show.

"The guy who won second place, Max Ottersbach, is actually the guy I've helped train over the past year-and-a-half."

March is typically the snowiest month of the year in Colorado, and this year proved no exception as nine inches of the white stuff fell the day of competition.

"It was perfect weather the day before, 65 degrees, and we woke up the next morning to four inches of new snow and it dumped all day long," Green said. "I had five layers on. It was 24 degrees with a wind chill dropping the temperature down to 15. It's hard having all those layers on and when it's your turn to saw or chop you have to strip and stand there freezing."

Green was happy to win, but dissatisfied with his performance.

"I felt like I competed at only a C level this time, not as well as I had hoped, but good enough to win," he said.

Looking ahead to the Stihl Collegiate Championship in Oregon this summer, Green can barely restrain his enthusiasm. This year the Timbersports Series world championships celebrates its 25th anniversary, and organizers felt the Oregon State Fair was the perfect venue with Oregon's storied legacy of logging and lumberjacks.

"One of the first thoughts that went through my head when I knew I won was that my dad could finally watch me compete in a big event," he said. "It's so hard for him to travel because of back problems. But hey, this is just a two-hour jump over the hill, so it's going to be a blast."