Authorized newspaper of Fort Lewis, Washington
3rd Bde. Soldiers battle the 593rd Sust. Bde. team in the Pride Week Pugil Stick Squad Smackdown at Memorial Stadium. 593rd was the squad champion.
Pugil Sticks were originally designed as a safer form of training for bayonet fighting in the 1930s and 1940s. Wednesday, May 8, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division and the 593rd Sustainment Brigade proved to be the best handlers of these training tools as they took the overall and team titles, respectively, of the Pride Week Pugil Stick Smackdown at Memorial Stadium.
The 3rd Bde. 2nd Inf. Div. was by far the most dominant major subordinate command in the individual championship round, laying claim to five titles in seven weight classes. The Arrowhead Brigade was represented in each weight class with the exception of heavyweight; it also had two combatants fight each other in the middleweight finals.
Each victor had to work his or her way through three days of a bracket-style tournament while dressed head to toe in protective gear. Points were awarded by a judge for clean strikes to the head and body delivered during the two 2-minute rounds.
While scoring as many points as possible during the allotted time was the goal for the individual portion of the tournament, knocking your opponent to the ground or out of the painted ring was the objective for the team tourney.
After completely dominating 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division in the semi-finals, the five-Soldier squad from 593rd Sust. Bde. had a little tougher time ridding the ring of the Arrowhead Brigade. The team rules were that a fighter was only ruled out of the fight if knocked down, he or she couldn’t be pushed down or out of the ring for the first half of the round; halfway through the round that rule changed. When the bull horn sounded, which marked the point at which fighters could be pushed out of the ring, both teams had most of their combatants still standing.
As the free for all began, fighters started teaming up to shove their opponents out of the ring by whatever means necessary. When the melee was said and done, one person from the 593rd remained standing in the ring and the team was crowned squad champs.
“It’s great,” said the 593rd’s Andrew Burt of winning the team title. “Showing that the 593rd Sust. Bde. is a force to be reckoned with makes you feel good inside. We may not have been able to win the individual event, but we came out of this with the team trophy because we fought and won as a team. It feels awesome.”
Burt said he sees the pugil stick competition, along with other fighting competitions, as a positive trend in the Army.
“The Army’s getting to the point where we’re doing more and more combatives and hand fighting,” he said, “so this is a good chance to see exactly what we need to work on and prove to other Soldiers that this makes sense.”
He also said he feels these competitions also double as training exercises and helps Soldiers get over the initial fear of being punched or kicked.
“The biggest problem the average Soldier has, in my opinion, is that they don’t want to take a hit if they don’t have to,” he said. “It’s walking in knowing you’re going to take a hit and it might ring your bell and might knock you out. But doing this helps them overcome that because once you take those first few blows, you realize ‘I can take it, it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.’ It gets your adrenaline pumping so you can finish the fight if you need to.”
The purpose behind this competition, as it was for each Pride Week event, was to help “build espirit de corps” according to 593rd’s team coach Zenon Herrera. William Lynch, the office in charge of the Pugil Stick Smackdown, feels that goal was accomplished.
“Overall, I was really impressed,” Lynch said of the teams. “I think it’s something we should continue to do, let it be an annual Pride Week event. It’s something different. It helps Soldiers not only take pride in Fort Lewis, but the competitions help them take pride in their units.”
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