Changing of the guard
Not without a fight, last year's champ and runner-up make way for younger competitors
COLUMBUS, Ga. — The girls of the STIHL TIMBERSPORTS boom run share the similar backgrounds and commonality of experience that make developing friendships with each other almost a given, but they are friendships centered around competition.
"I can't even explain it to you," said Alyse Schroeder, who was seeded third after the quarterfinal competition in Lehi, Utah. "I cannot get the smile off my face."
With an official time of 11.38 seconds, Schroeder eliminated sixth-seeded Tanya Fischer, who had the second-fastest time of the day at 11.87 seconds.
Though she gave Fischer a verbal pat on the back for posting the impressive time and lamented the layout of the competition that ignores the runners' times and pits them against each other in a one-shot, winner-take-all bracket system, Schroeder has little sympathy. After all, this isn't a debutante ball — this is boom running.
"Everybody is so fricking competitive …" she said. "You're friends, but then a couple minutes before the competition starts, it's like, 'Don't talk to me.'"
Another factor that draws the boom runners together is geography. Of the six boom runners who made it to the quarterfinals of the STIHL TIMBERSPORTS presented by Carhartt at the Aflac Outdoor Games, five are from Wisconsin and two pairs grew up in the same respective hometowns and train together.
Schroeder and last year's champion, Taylor Duffy, grew up together in Hayward, Wis., a town of 50,000 that is a virtual Mecca for lumberjack athletes and home to the Lumberjack World Championships in July. Duffy, 26, gave Schroeder, six years her junior, her first lesson in log rolling when Schroeder was only seven years old.
"We were definitely bred and raised in this," Schroeder said. "For us [younger competitors], it's always been Jenny, Shana, Taylor. Those three have been the top three, honestly, for five years."
While she calls Duffy a "best friend," Schroeder, in comparison to Judd, who looks to Martin as a coach, determinedly avoids talking about coaching or mentorship. She prefers to focus on the competition at hand.
"The top people are changing," she said. "It's finally to the point where we have enough experience and we finally know how to control our bodies that we can get across the logs nicely.
Jenny is Jenny Atkinson, 36, a new mother and a fixture in elite boom running competitions, who has won multiple Lumberjack World Championships and finished second to Taylor Duffy in the STIHL TIMBERSPORTS Finals last year.
Atkinson, who was feeling back in competitive form in the days leading up to the semi-finals, nabbed the last qualifying spot in Lehi just two months after giving birth. In her run against Schroeder on Day One of the semi-finals, Atkinson looked to be in pain and stopped on the far platform, wincing and leaning on a barrel for support. After some moments had passed, she limped back onto the boom and made it to the second-to-last log before falling in the water and asking for help out of the pool.
"I felt so good yesterday," Atkinson said. "I was so back. I'm so disappointed. I don't think I've ever not been in the finals."
Atkinson's injury didn't actually come during competition, it happened during the preceding day when the boom runners and the rest of the lumberjack competitors put on an exhibition event for media.
"I got a pinched nerve yesterday that I was just praying it would release," said Atkinson, confirming with a paramedic on site that the nerve was likely in her lower back. "I'm not someone that doesn't finish, but I was in pain.
Duffy, too, is unwilling to give up her spot at the top of the boom running world, but, by failing to qualify for the semifinals while she was in Lehi, it's a reality that she's had to face.
"It's so horrible," Duffy said. "This is the first time that this has ever happened to me. I'm 26 years old and I'm the defending champion and I felt so great coming in this year. There's a little bit of pressure being the defending champion, but I felt so great and I've been training."
Duffy said that coming to grips with not competing in Columbus, Ga., was more than a week-long ordeal. Ultimately, because she's been in the sport her whole life, Duffy decided to make the trip to Georgia in support of her friends. She said she's excited for Schroeder, who's "running great," talks about taking the up-and-coming star "under her wing," and more than once uncomfortably uses the phrase "stepping aside."
"We train together," Duffy said of Schroeder, "but there's obviously a little bit of a competition between us both. I kind of took her underneath my wing, and now she's really blossoming and so, I'm kind of like, 'Hey, I'll step aside and let you…'"
Duffy stopped just short of the word "win."
"But at the same time, I'm also just coming into my prime too," she said. "I have a feeling that we're going to be going head-to-head with each other for a while."
While Duffy and Atkinson are making the most of their bad situations, Shana Martin is the only remaining boom runner left from the old guard. While the youngsters talk about a shift toward the younger competitors, Martin has a good shot at winning and it's clear that none of the three are planning on making a graceful exit from boom running any time soon.
"Shana's been winning for a while and Jenny's been winning for a while and even though I am one of the older competitors, I don't want to be pushed out of the way just yet," said Duffy. "I'm not ready to quit."
