First responders from around the island gathered Saturday in Kona to compete in the inaugural First Responder Invitational Fitness Competition.
Each of the 25 teams were comprised of two first responders, including police, fire, EMS, lifeguards, FBI and DOCARE officers and one high school youth athlete competing in a swim/run/obstacle course functional fitness competition.
Tiger Hill of Respect the Corners, which trains and operates from the University of the Nations, held the event that started with a one third mile swim at Kailua Bay, followed by a run from the pier to University of the Nations and culminated with a grueling obstacle course on the school campus.
“I have had the privilege of working with police officers and our Special Response Team here on the island for the last two years. I was born and raised on Oahu and growing up I never had the best experience with first responders primarily because when they get called, something bad is happening,” said Hill.
He said all his interactions were around negative experiences, but when he started running SRT’s strength and conditioning training he started fostering friendships.
“I started seeing these guys are legit. They are amazing men. They are leaders and mentors,” he said.
The other group Hill works with running strength and conditioning is high school athletes at Konawaena and Kealakehe.
“I was looking at these two groups I’m around on a regular basis and I said I have to find a way to change the experience a little bit so that these kids can be around these men and women who lay their lives down for our community and really see that they are awesome. They can see them in a positive experience,” he said.
Hill wanted to pair two first responders with a high school athlete and put them through a challenge, mentally, physically and emotionally.
“Let them go through this shared experience together so they can see that these men and women are incredible and also for the first responders to see if there is anything we can invest in, it is the younger generation,” he said. “I thought let us put them through a taste of what these guys do.”
Hill said they built the obstacle course so it would simulate what first responders have to do.
“They had to lift a weighted stretcher, go up and over walls, flip tires and move weights around. It’s things they would do every day on the job, but they brought youth with them to go through it so that when they hit the moment of not being able to make it up the wall the first responder could say, ‘hey I got you’ and help lift them up that wall,” he said. The course also included lunges, and army crawl through a mud pit.
“At the end of the day I didn’t know if the experience would happen but I can’t tell you how many families, kids and first responders came back and said it was a life changing experience,” said Hill.
Police Lt. Scotty Lewis, who worked in the SRT unit for 13 years, was part of the winning team at Saturday’s competition along with teammates Hill and Kamehameha High School athlete Xander Hoopai.
“These obstacles were very tough. The goal was to mentor these youths so they could finish. Maybe when you are that age you don’t have the mental fortitude to go ahead and finish, so it was up to the adults to help the kids and vice versa and just give them a positive roll model,” said Lewis. “You had to do it as a team. You had to work together.”
The gene must run strong in the Lewis family as his daughter Baylee was on the first women’s team to finish with Officers Makena Nahooikaika and Chyann Gabriel.
Community businesses came together to help with the event providing lunch, supplying materials and building the course along with donating cash for prizes.
“I wanted to make it personal, so I went to every police and fire station on the island, every lifeguard station and told them about the event. I did the same things for sponsors so people could meet me,” said Hill.
Even though Hill was on the winning team, he did not take the prize money.
“I’m not running the event to make any profit from it. My goal is to see our island transformed, to see relationships and families transformed,” he said.
Hill met with the SRT on Monday for weekly training and the officers told him they have never felt so appreciated by the Big Island community.
“People saw us for who we really are,” they told him.
Hill plans on making this an annual event and based on the response, he sees the momentum gaining strength.
“Word got around,” he said.
In addition to holding the strength training events, Hill has taken on another mission.
“Because I went to every station, I saw the inadequate training facilities where they work. They have to go somewhere else to get their PT in. So another layer of what I’m trying to do is raise funds so we can renovate the Kona Police Station so those guys don’t have to go anywhere else. For lifeguards, we are looking at converting a shipping container into a training facility we can drop in the parking lot so they have some place to train. My goal would be to have every station on the island renovated so they have their own training facility,” Hill said.
“With Tiger putting this all together and coordinating, he is the most selfless man I know,” said Lewis. “He puts everybody in front of himself.”
