A Flathead Valley Community College forestry graduate and Logger Sports competitor is headed to Poland next week to compete in the Stihl Timbersports World Championship.

Calvin Willard, 33, graduated from FVCC in 2004 and helped lead the college’s Logger Sports team to the Western Championship title that year. He now lives in Barnet, Vermont, where he is a forestry consultant and is involved with his family’s maple syrup business.

Willard started competing in logger sports in 2002 at FVCC. He finished seventh at the 2014 U.S. Championship and placed third in the 2015 Northeast Pro Qualifier. This is his first year in the Stihl Timbersports Series.

More than 100 of the world’s top lumberjack athletes from more than 20 countries will vie for the 2015 world champion titles in team and individual competition in Poznan, Poland, Nov. 13-14.

Willard is a member of the five-man U.S. team.

“I am really fortunate that FVCC is where I got my start,” Willard said. “The coaches were very knowledgeable in the sport compared to other colleges, which gave me a great advantage.”

FVCC Logger Sports coach Annie Beall remembers Willard’s natural athleticism. She and her husband, Bob, have coached the team at FVCC for more than 30 years.

“He was just a natural athlete, which helps,” Beall said. “The more time and effort you put into it the better you’re going to do.”

Beall said Willard has access to his own wood on his 160 acres of Vermont forest. Many people who initially pursue logging sports aren’t able to continue competing because it’s difficult to practice without readily available wood.

“For him [Willard] to be in the top five in the U.S., that’s pretty cool,” she added.

Willard and the rest of the team will fly to Sweden next week to train with the Swedish team for a week before traveling to Poland. He competes individually in 30-plus competitions each year and said the excitement of logging sports is just as great now as it was when he began in 2002.

“The camaraderie on the FVCC team was great, which is something that I really appreciated about competing in the college circuit,” Willard said. “We did so much more together as a team than just compete. It was a really unique experience in that way.”

The FVCC Logger Sports team has racked up a number of wins since it began competing nationally in 1984. The team has taken home 14 first-place wins from the Association of Western Forestry Clubs Conclave, the largest logger sports event in the Northwest, which includes all logging teams west of the Mississippi River.

FVCC Logger Sports is the only team to win four consecutive Conclave championships from 1988 through 1991. It also is the only team to capture the Conclave title five years in a row, from 1996 to 2000.

The Stihl Timbersports Series is an international competition series in lumberjack sports.

The first wood-chopping world championship took place in Tasmania in 1891. From there, logging sports took off around the world. Even today, nearly all the disciplines using axes and saws to replicate traditional forestry activities. All of the disciplines revolve around the athlete’s handling of the sports equipment and the wood.

In the individual competition for the World Championship in Poland, and in the national championships that took place around the world between May and October, the athletes compete in six disciplines: springboard, stock saw, standing block chop, single buck, underhand chop and hot saw.

Willard’s strongest discipline is the standing block chop, according to his biography on the Stihl Timbersports website. He chops several blocks of wood each week to keep in shape. The 6-foot, 180-pound athlete also enjoys hockey, skiing and hunting. And he has a 5-year-old daughter, named quite appropriately, Sawyer.

The World Championship attracts about 10,000 spectators to the live events, with millions of fans following the competition on Eurosport and other television stations worldwide. A link to live-stream the competition can be found at www.stihlusa.com/stihl-timbersports.