By Marcus Henderson
San Quentin prisoners celebrated the Fourth of July holiday with an array of tournaments on the Lower Yard.
David Silva was crowned the mainline most physically fit man in the Iron Man competition.
“You learn a lot about yourself and others when you are facing trials,” said Silva. “I just kept telling myself to push through it.”
He completed a seven-station obstacle course with the time of 10:12.
The competition was the prison version of the Olympic heptathlon. In the first station, the competitors pushed a steel cart with two 50-gallon trashcans filled with water from the Addiction Recovery Center (ARC) building up a steep hill for about 120 yards to the prison industry gate.
After a quick sprint to station two, the pull-up bars, each competitor had to do 25 pull-ups. Once completed, station three was 100 military style push-ups. Then a 50-yard sprint passed the guard shack to station four, the baseball field, for 50 squats. After the squats, the contestants had to carry the heavy punching bag around the in-field bases back to home plate. The final six and seven station consisted of pushing the steel cart back up the hill with one trashcan and run one lap around the yard track to finish.
“A lot of people didn’t show up after they saw how hard it was,” said Willis “Country” Randolph, one of the judges. “You can do burpees and workout all day, but you have to be prepared to do all that.”
David Fairie took second with the time of 10:42 and Darell “Obadiah” Flowers came in third with 10:57.
“I think I’m one of the oldest out here,” said Flowers. “But I showed I still got it.”
There was a softball tournament, where the teams The Sandlots and The Strikers were the last two teams standing for the best two out of three championship. The Sandlots took the first game 9-8. The Strikers regroup the second game for a 14-2 blow out. The Sandlots finish for the win 21-7.
“We thank everybody who contributed to this win,” said Angelo Ramsey. “It was a great day, and we had fun.”
The Asian Pacific Islanders held their annual basketball tournament, which was about “fostering unity, healthy competition and having fun,” said organizer V. Chau.
“Society is built on trust,” said Damon Cooke. “That’s why we want to promote unity among the population and break the barriers of mistrust. So we all can develop and grow as human beings.”
Rafael Cuevas’ team won the tournament.
