The Whitehorse firefighters combat challenge team continues to prove it doesn't matter how big the department you come from is, it's all about how hard you work.

The squad recently competed at the Scott FireFit Combat Challenge national championships in Edmonton, where four of them set personal best times and the team finished third overall in the five-man relay.

Their time of one minute, 11 seconds was also a personal best for the team, which was first at the regional competition held in Whitehorse last May.

You can't ask for much better than that.

'Going in, we knew we would do well,' said Brian Fedoriak, captain of the local combat challenge team. 'Our goal was to place in the top five. We did that and better.

'We were excited, the guys were able to pull though.'

The team decided to 'switch it up a bit' at nationals this year, replacing Glenn Regan with Troy Cairns in the relay. But the rest of the veteran crew remained the same, with Fedoriak, Barry Blisner, Scott MacFarlane and James Paterson rounding it out on the relay course.

Regan still went along for the trip and competed individually, as did newcomer Jordan Borgford.

The four-day competition was held at the University of Alberta, in the Butter Dome. The indoor course was good, said Fedoriak, because it made sure the event was fair for everyone, with no weather interference.

The national championships, like all Scott Firefit Combat Challenges, featured five different events the stair climb, hose hoist, forcible entry, hose advance and victim rescue.

While the Whitehorse squad had an automatic bye to the final day of individual competition, because of their placing at regionals, they were still allowed to race the course on the two wild-card days Thursday and Friday in order to get in some practice. Everybody posted personal bests on the wild-card days.

The real action for the local team started on Saturday, with a tournament-style format for the relay event. Each team was scheduled to run the relay three separate times on Saturday, to try and finish in the top eight and advance to Sunday's final.

Whitehorse had a bye in the first round, went up against a team from Quebec in the second round and then had a great final race against Conception Bay (Newfoundland and Labrador) in order to finish fifth and advance to Sunday's relay final.

In the final, Whitehorse raced another Quebec team and beat them by just .07 of a second, finishing third overall.

'It was wire to wire up the tower, down the tower, throughout the entire thing,' said Fedoriak. 'It was probably the best race of the day, everybody was saying, because it was the closest.

'It should be pretty exciting to watch when TSN broadcasts it (later this fall, the date has yet to be announced).'

The only two teams who finished the course faster than Whitehorse were Edmonton and Windsor (Ontario), which both have much bigger numbers to draw from. For their third-place finish, the relay team received $3,000 U.S. toward firefighting gear, which they will turn over to Whitehorse Fire Chief Clive Sparks to use for the entire department.

'We get so much support from our fire department,' said Fedoriak. 'Without them, none of this would be possible.'

In individual competition on Sunday, Fedoriak, Blisner, MacFarlane and Cairns all posted personal bests, with Fedoriak finishing eighth overall in a time of 1:24.

'My race was pretty good,' he said. 'I went against Jack Bailey (from the Windsor department), one of the best in Canada who has won on the world level before as well, so my goal was just to keep up with him. I actually ran a 1:24, but I had a two second penalty (added on to that) when the donut bounced out of the basket on the tower.

'That one mistake cost me two positions. I went from fourth to eighth place. My goal was to be in the top five and without the penalty I was there, but stuff happens on any given day.

'I kept within a half second of Jack, so I was happy.'

Blisner collected a time of 1:44 while MacFarlane posted a time of 1:40 and Cairns ran the course in 1:48.

Also completing the course at the championships were Paterson, with a time of 1:46 and Regan, with a time of 1:55. Borgford, in his first year of combat training, finished the course in 2:44.

Whitehorse finished 12th overall for team time, which is the combined time from the three fastest competitors in the department.

'We beat five minutes, which had been a goal of ours for some time,' said a pleased Fedoriak. 'We did it in 4:56.'

After last year's nationals, which were held in Sherbrooke, Quebec, the Whitehorse combat challenge team returned home and began preparation for the world championships in Las Vegas.

But this time around, they'll be skipping the worlds, partly because it's just too expensive ñ� they're being held in Florida this year.

'The nationals were our number one goal this year,' said Fedoriak. 'Now, we're going to take some time off and get back at it for next year. Next year's nationals will be held in Niagara Falls.

'We've been continuing to build and improve on what we've done in the past and hopefully, we'll be able to do the same next year.'