Spokane’s LaVoie takes world championship
Lumberjack sports aren’t lost in Spokane. It’s actually where the champion lives.
In July, Erin LaVoie, 32, whacked and split her way to the 2014 All-Around Lady Jill title during the 55th Annual Lumberjack World Championships in Hayward, Wisconsin. LaVoie, a Ferris High School graduate who got started in lumber sports while studying forestry at Spokane Community College, took the women’s world championship from nine-time winner Nancy Zalewski of Wisconsin.
“This was so huge,” LaVoie said, still giddy from the win, especially because she consistently beat the former champion during the three-day competition in the very events that she once dominated. “It wasn’t a fluke.”
LaVoie also won individual world titles in the underhand chop – hacking through an 11-inch aspen log with a single-bit pinned ax – and the single buck, using a cross-cut saw to sever a 16-inch white pine log. She also holds world records in the underhand chop.
She’s no stranger to winning big, claiming three Iron Jill world championships and two medals in the ESPN Great Outdoor Games in addition to holding a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most Christmas trees cut – 27 – in two minutes. The previous record was six trees.
“I don’t like to lose,” LaVoie said.
Besides training with an actual logger and having a professional ax sharpener, LaVoie attributes her success to intense CrossFit workouts. She owns the Spokane gym CrossFit Predation with her husband and works out about four hours a day. She coaches classes and works on her chopping skills weekly in the off season, and at least three times a week when competing. She takes an ice bath every Wednesday, practices yoga and likes to drink Guinness beer.
She also competes across the region in log rolling – usually winning – but doesn’t do water sports at the world championships because it’s too difficult logistically to do both the sawing and water events.
LaVoie remembers flipping TV channels in high school and stopping to watch lumberjack games.
“I thought, what is this and why are people doing this?” she said. “Then a few years later my mom is watching me on TV. What a weird world.”