‘Different from kind of anything else that you could do’: UNB Woodsmen confident for season ahead

Matthew Piercey is taking part in a cross-cut race during a competition. (Submitted: Matthew Piercey)

The University of New Brunswick (UNB) Woodsmen hosted their first lumberjack competition of the season on Oct. 18. 

The men’s A team came in second, the B team in eighth and the women’s team in third at the 59th Annual Nicolis Campbell Memorial. 

They will compete in two more competitions this season at Fleming College in Lindsay, Ont. and at Dalhousie University’s Agricultural Campus in Truro, N.S.

Matthew Piercey, third-year forestry student and A team captain, thinks that they will place well in both.

“The team's super hungry for it … we have a lot of people who had their first competition ever doing this, there's a lot of nerves going in, but then after the first one the nerves tend to settle down and then you start getting excited for the next one,” he said.

Piercey joined the Woodsmen in his first year after seeing a demonstration during UNB's orientation week. 

Coming from Dartmouth, N.S., he didn’t really know anyone else at UNB and decided to expose himself to as much as possible.

“I saw them using the crosscut saw, and it was like, I wonder what they're doing. I went and checked it out, then ended up going to tryouts and actually met a lot of my friends that I have now through the team,” he said.

Growing up in a city, he didn’t have much experience chopping wood or using saws.

Besides camping, he wouldn’t describe himself as “very outdoorsy” growing up. The first time he used a chainsaw was when he joined the team.

At first, he found the sport intimidating while learning how to use the different tools and witnessing how well other team members used them. After practicing, he started to get the hang of it.

“You pick it up and you feel like a toddler, like a baby deer on ice, like you’re learning to walk. But once things start clicking, it started feeling really good and I fell in love with the sport,” he said.

Like Piercey, Audrey Thomas, a second-year forestry student and women’s team captain, joined the group in her first year.

“I've played sports my whole life. I played hockey all through high school and everything. So when I got to university, I really wanted to keep playing sports, but I didn't really know what to do. And so I found this through forestry and I decided I wanted to try it,” she said. “It's really different from kind of anything else that you could do, so it was really new.”

She thinks that she picked up the sport fairly quickly, but needed to practice consistently last year to get where she is at.

Both Piercey and Thomas specialize in the underhand chop and stock saw. For the underhand chop, they stand on top of the log while chopping it between their feet. The stock saw event utilizes a chainsaw.

Piercey thinks that the group's biggest strength this year is how cohesive they are. In previous years, the individual teams mostly stuck to themselves. This season, all three are interacting.

“Everyone's getting along really great. Everyone's being really helpful with each other as well,” he said. “We have a really solid A team, we have a really solid women's team, we have a really solid B team as well. We've got a lot of strong new contenders and we have a lot of people on our team that are able to help highlight that and help refine that throughout the season.”