Mayport Holds DC Olympics

Spoonsored by the Center for Naval Engineering (CNE) and DESRON 14, Carney beat out teams from USS Halyburton, USS Doyle, USS Simpson, USS Stephen W. Groves, USS Underwood, USS Robert G. Bradley and USS John L. Hall during the Sept. 12 event held at the base Firefighting School.

Teams of six from each represented ship competed in a DC written exam, self contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) dress up, Quick Reaction Team Event, Message Blank and Plot Relay, Hose Relay, All Purpose Chemical Protective Garment (ACPG) dress up, P-100 Pump Start, Pipe Patching and Shoring.

Carney's win was followed by USS Underwood and USS Simpson in second and third places. All of the competing ships are a part of DESRON 14, except for Carney, which belongs to DESRON 24. The event was opened to every ship in the basin, said Senior Chief Damage Controlman Roger Astrum of DESRON 14.

Astrum said that the Olympics was the ending of a week-long engineering symposium hosted by DESRON 14, SERMC and ATG. During the symposium, ship engineering representatives are brought together with subject matter experts from ATG and SERMC to discuss best practices, identify problems and solutions within the engineering community.

CNE Firefighting school instructors Damage Controlman 1st Class (SW) Eduardo Montoya and Damage Controlman 1st Class (SW) Derrick Harney helped coordinate the event.

"The enthusiasm was good," said Harney. "This gave a lot of opportunity for the junior Sailors to train and put in practice what they have learned."

"We haven't had this in awhile," said Astrum. "We really wanted to do get the camraderie geared up in the DC community and promote DC on the ships again."