Jackson Progress-Argus

Photo by Michael Davis/// A team of corrections officers from Smith State Prison works to complete the obstacle course, as part of the Commissioner's Challenge competition, at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison.

Roughly 120 Georgia Department of Corrections employees from around the state converged on the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson on Friday.

It wasn't because of a disturbance among the prison population, but the possibilities of such occurrences were exactly the reason they were competing in the Commissioner's Challenge.

Members of special operations teams competed in the finals of the Commissioner's Challenge for the right to take home the Commissioner's Cup. Emil Moore, special operations manager for the Department of Corrections, said a total of 29 teams competed in a month-long preliminaries session, in which teams participated in shooting, physical training and written tests.

On Friday, 12 teams of finalists were back at the prison shooting range and obstacle course for the Commissioner's Challenge finals.

Moore said Department of Corrections Commissioner Brian Owens has put more emphasis on physical fitness among Corrections employees since being appointed to the post in 2009. The special operations units like those in the competition, Moore said, are tasked with putting down riots and quelling disturbances and other problems among inmates, making fitness training an important element of the job.

"We're the first responders to any situation," he said. Special operations "is our equivalent to special forces in the military."

On Friday, at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, the 12 finalist teams started with a firing range competition and moved to team-building exercises, which included tasks that required members of each team to contribute toward a common goal.

The teams then moved on to the obstacle course, which included a log roll that required every team member to lay across horizontal logs and roll over a raised wooden track toward the other side.

There were also obstacles that required team members to help each other over high barricades, and across rope swings.

"You can't go through the obstacles without getting your whole team across, so it's all about staying together," said Kristen Stancil, a Corrections Department spokeswoman.

This year's Commissioner's Challenge was the second held.

Taking home the Commissioner's Cup was the K-9 Unit that competed, Stancil said. Last year, the winning team was from Hays State Prison in Trion, Ga.

Other teams competing this year were from the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, Hancock, Hays, Phillips, Rutledge, Smith, Valdosta, Ware and Wilcox state prisons, and Probation CERT (Correctional Emergency Response Teams) from Southeast and Northwest Georgia.

The Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison team was an individual award winner, Stancil added. The team won first place in the obstacle course.

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On the net:

Georgia Department of Corrections: www.dcor.state.ga.us