I’d no sooner opened my book of Robert Frost’s poetry to start the morning right when Neighbor J drove up. A wind had downed trees in his pasture, and he was sawing one up when his chainsaw had gotten pinched — “Can you help me get it out?” A “pinch” happens when the tree trunk suddenly sags or shifts, clamping the saw bar tight in the kerf like gigantic wooden jaws. 

After more than 20 years of wood chopping and log sawing and award winning, the Haywood Community College Lumberjacks — the school’s timbersports team — will soon gain a permanent home. 

“The current practice facility is back where the old mill used to be, and it’s probably just as old as that was, late ‘60s,” said Matt Heimburg, dean of arts, sciences and natural resources at HCC. “It has a tin roof and a few logs somehow holding it up. So it’s long overdue for them to get a new practice space, for sure.”

The Haywood Community College timbersports team claimed first place at the Mid-Atlantic States Intercollegiate Woodsmen’s Meet held at the Haywood County Fairgrounds this past weekend. 

HCC student Darby Hand took first place in the STIHL Timbersports Collegiate Series Mid-Atlantic Qualifier. As a result, he will compete in the U.S. Collegiate Championships in Milwaukee in late July. Following HCC, Penn State Mont Alto came in second place and Montgomery Community College came in third.    

Haywood Community College student Logan Hawks recently placed third in the nation in the STIHL TIMBERSPORTS Series Collegiate Lumberjack Competition.

He is the third HCC student since 2007 to rank as a top place finisher in the national woodsmen competition. 

Dana Dowdy raised a razor-sharp axe above her head, let it hover a moment and then slammed into her competition with the first of many swift, deft blows. 

The throngs of cheering people on the sidelines became background noise. The other lumberjills looking on weren’t her concern either. Today, her beef was with the large, stubborn block of wood between her feet.