Burning Ambition: Firefighters Battle for Glory in Morinville’s Combat Challenge

by Stephen Dafoe

Rushing into a burning building to save lives and fight fires is a serious enterprise requiring a proper mixture of skills and stamina, something few people see close up. But during the 11th Annual Morinville Fire Department’s Combat Challenge, held at the Morinville Leisure Centre, a full house saw those skills on display for four hours.

Just under 50 firefighters from around the region and beyond competed in four categories: Men’s, Women’s, Masters (for competitors over 35) and Relay.

Before the Saturday event, Morinville Fire Chief Brad Boddez said the purpose of the obstacle course is to simulate anything job-related. “It’s getting them ready to do what is required on the job in a fun, sporting [way],” Boddez said. “Firefighters are very competitive, but it’s a great bonding moment for the brotherhood.”

Dressed in full gear, competitors started the course by carrying a 45-pound packed fire hose on their back up four flights of stairs, where they dropped the pack and used a rope to haul another bundled fire hose from the ground up to the top floor. Upon completing that task, each firefighter returned to ground level, ensuring their feet touched each step in the four-storey scaffold structure. On the ground, competitors drove a concrete block a distance of one foot using a sledgehammer, an exercise replicating the exertion needed for a forced entry. Next, the firefighter manoeuvred around a set of fire hydrants to grab a fully charged fire hose, drag it back across the arena floor obstacle course and let loose on a target. The firefighters then exchanged the heavy hose for an equally heavy rescue mannequin, dragging the 200-pound dead weight across the arena floor lot to reach the finish line.

This year’s competition saw multiple Combat Challenge winner and Morinville Firefighter Joshua Cust take first place with an obstacle course time of 1:38:46. Beaumont firefighter Jory Bourdon followed Cust in second place at 1:46:14. Fellow Beaumont firefighter Jason Giebelhaus took third place in Masters with a time of 1:46:22, a fraction of a second behind Bourdon.

In the Women’s division, Hinton Fire Department firefighter Jenna Sitar took first place at 3:10:56. Gibbons Fire Department firefighter Cassidy Matetich took second at 3:32:96. Morinville firefighter Cassandra Timms took third place with a time of 4:42.51.

In the men’s division, Morinville firefighter Steven Holobowich took first with a time of 1:32:24. Spruce Groves Josh Heinrichs took second place at 1:50:21. Gibbons firefighter Jason Barrett took third at 1:56:87.

The event concluded with a team relay. A Wild Card Team of Tyler Beck, Kris Myers, Nathan Douglas, Draper Dempsey, and Bryan Bambrick took first place with a time of 1:34:15.

Second place, at 1:34:33, went to a team made up of Justin Sherwood, Sterling Glaubitz, Matt Fitzgerald, Cassidy Matetich, and Cole Hanson.

Clocking in at 1:36:87 for third place was a team of Steve Cadieux, Daniel Bowman, Josh Cust, Shauna Boyd, and Graham Glaubitz.