FORT PIERRE - Six men and five women will represent the city of Fort Pierre, and particularly its fire department, Thursday afternoon when they compete in several races against other fire departments.
The evolutions competition at State Fire School will pit teams from various departments against each other in a series of races to extinguish a "fire" by hooking up hoses, getting water flow and hitting a target with the water.
The Fort Pierre Fire Department has two teams geared up for the competition. Rick Cronin, Joe Meligan, Eric Paul, Mark Menning, Corey Ramsey and Lance Kuper will run the races for the men's three-man competition and Sharon Ellwein, Laina Anderson, Tanna Gardner, Tammy Paul and Samantha Reeves will run in the auxiliary women's three-man competition.
Though the two teams are rooting for each other, they still have a friendly rivalry. Steak dinners are the prize for whichever team wins between the two.
"Our goal is to beat the Fort Pierre men's teams," said Laina Anderson, captain of the women's team. "This is the first time racing for all of us, but we hope to continue to do it each year."
Firefighters who have participated in the evolutions before taught the women's team what to do.
"We just watched them once, and then they kind of walked us through it. After that we just did it ourselves. We use a smaller hose. That's the only difference," Anderson said.
The women's team is made up of friends and family members of firefighters on the Fort Pierre Volunteer Fire Department. They will be competing against three other women's teams from Beresford, Brandon and Yankton. The men's team will compete against Yankton and Beresford teams.
Tuesday evening, both teams practiced their races at the Expo Center parking lot, but unlike their past five weeks of practice, the groups ran through the races as they will have to during the competitions. They went through each race one time and recorded the times.
Men's teams run a series of four races including ladder, lengthening, Siamese and a truck race. The women do not run the ladder race, but they compete in the other three. Each race has three participants, so team members have to switch out.
Competing in evolutions is a long-time tradition for members of the Fort Pierre Fire Department, and winning the evolutions is somewhat of a norm as well.
Rick Cronin, assistant fire chief, said since he has been competing, the men have won five championships, and many women's teams have won throughout the past 20 years too.
Both Fort Pierre teams plan to win at fire school this week.
Evolution competitions are open to the public and will begin around 3 p.m., Thursday at the Expo Center parking lot in Fort Pierre.
