At 5-foot-9 and 120 pounds, Otis Sisk is not exactly the specimen to build the franchise around.

"I wasn't designed for heavy lifting," he said, "but I can climb pretty fast."

Becky Stein/Special (ENLARGE)

Matt Warzecha streches to ring the bell during the Work Climb at the tree-climbing competition in Decatur.

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Which starts to explain how Sisk, 26, won the 11th Annual Georgia Arborist Association's Tree Climbing Championship.

In the exclusive fraternity of tree jockeys, Sisk outshone a field of 20 who spent Saturday clambering around a community of mature oaks at the United Methodist Children's Home in Decatur.

Part tree service industry seminar, part training refresher course and part macho branch-swinging, the state master championship is Sisk's third straight, despite a scoring gaffe for leaving a piece of equipment in the tree (major no-no with a 20-point demerit).

But of the two remaining in the masters field, Matt Warzecha dropped a piece of equipment (a saw holster) during the 25-minute finals climb, drawing an automatic disqualification, and Guadalupe Lopez lost 60 points when he omitted a saw element from the seven-event finals. Sisk won without serious challenge.

"Any ugly win is better than a pretty loss any day," he said.

Not that victory was the day's lone goal. Though Sisk advances to the Southern regional championships in two weeks in Knoxville, the contest belonged to the art of the tree well-climbed.

A national survey recently found tree service has surpassed deep-sea fishing and logging as the most hazardous profession in America. This was a chance for Georgia's best tree climbers — all tree care professionals — to acknowledge each other.

"This profession has a real Darwinian effect," said Pete Jenkins, president of the GAA. "When you get injured, it's usually a big deal. And we know that."

So, much of the competition is dedicated to safety. One event in the preliminary round involved "rescuing" a 145-pound dummy from a high nook.

Points are deducted not just for sloppy rope work, but for failure to maintain proper communication with co-workers on the ground.

"They know each other by the companies they work for, and this is how they hook up and meet other climbers," Jenkins said. "So it's a very social thing, a very close cultural group. This is a very dangerous profession."

The full-day competition itself prompted plenty of neck craning from passers-by on Columbia Drive who do not typically espy tree-hugging without, say, an environmental march to go with it.

But the competition, particularly the three-man finals, was as much about grabbing the next branch as it was planning navigation around the tree — a 100-plus-year-old white oak — as it was belay strategy.

"You got to plan your work and work your plan," said Scott Profit, chairman of the World Tree Climbing championships, who was on hand.

While the day's highest-scoring climber was South Carolinian Lucas Drew, Sisk, as a Georgia native from Auburn, earned the state title as well as the chance to make the Worlds, to be held this summer in St. Louis.

But whatever awaits him, nothing will compare with a day climbing among friends.

"It's a family," said Sisk, the son of a utility worker who introduced him to tree clearance work. "It's not even about competition, really. It's about the atmosphere and the people. It's community building."

At 200 feet off the ground.