Cincinnati State firefighting students to compete
November 7, 2008
A team of students from Cincinnati State’s fire safety program will be leaving soon for Las Vegas to compete in the international round of a competition that one ESPN analyst has dubbed “the toughest two minutes in sports.’’
The Cincinnati State team made the 2008 world finals of the “Firefighter Combat Challenge’’ on the strength of its performance in a regional competition held recently in Evansville, Indiana. Though it placed sixth among the 14 teams in the Evansville competition, Cincinnati State’s was the only student team. The other top finishers consisted of professional firefighters.
One member of the Cincinnati State team, Jared Boots, is a contender for Rookie of the Year honors in the individual portion of the competition. Other team members are fellow students Carra Sparks, Arjuna Smith, Zach Webb and Ben Burnhimer.
The “Firefighter Combat Challenge’’ dates to the early 1970s, when Dr. Paul Davis and colleagues at the University of Maryland devised a series of federally-funded tests designed to measure the fitness of firefighters by mimicking conditions they were apt to face on the job. To help evaluate the tests, the researchers recruited 100 firefighters from the Washington, D.C. area – and noticed that the firefighters competed with each other to improve their performance. In 1991, Davis incorporated the testing regime into a formal competition in the District of Columbus. It proved popular and spawned similar events, which ESPN began to cover in 1993. Today the events may be seen on the Versus network.
Here’s how it works:
Each participant is dressed in full gear, including an air tank and breathing mask (which must be used during the competition.) The combined apparatus typically weighs at least 35 pounds.
Contestants start the timed competition by carrying a 42-pound pack to the top of a five-story tower. Once there, they haul a rope hand-over-hand to bring up a 42-pound roll of hose to the top. Then they run down the steps, touching each one as they go. Once on the ground, they run to a station where they use a 9-pound mallet to drive a 160-pound steel I-beam a distance of at least five feet (simulating skills needed to force one’s way into a building).
Now the fun starts. After zig-zagging 140 feet past simulated hydrants, contestants pick up a fully-charged fire hose and drag it 75 feet, open the nozzle, spray a target, close the nozzle and place it in a box. Then the final challenge: dragging a 175-pound, life-size rescue dummy 100 feet to the finish line.
For most of us, just finishing this task would be quite a feat. For this competition, doing it in less than three minutes is pretty much expected, at least for younger male firefighters, and the best ones are aiming for two minutes or less.
The Cincinnati State team, for example, made it to the nationals with a team time (the lowest three scores combined from the five competitors) of 6 minutes, 7 seconds.
The world record individual time, set in 2001, is 1 minute, 19.2 seconds.
“ESPN named it the toughest two minutes in sports, and it stuck,’’ said Steve Schreck, the Cincinnati State adjunct instructor who coaches the team.
It is, he says, a competition that requires speed, power, acceleration, agility, strength and flexibility. “You have to be in condition all the way across the board.’’
The ideal contender, Schreck says, has the physical attributes of both a body builder and a marathon runner. “We want these guys right in the middle.’’
About Cincinnati State
Cincinnati State offers more than 75 associate degree and 40 certificate programs in business technologies, health and public safety, engineering technologies, humanity and sciences and information technologies. About 8,150 students were enrolled in the early fall 2008 term; last year 14,000 separate students participated in credit and non-credit classes.
Cincinnati State has a 93% placement rate within three months of graduation, and its students have a 91% pass rate on required licensing and registry exams. It has the largest co-op program among two-year colleges in the U.S.
