CrossFit Athletic Group

In the Champions Club's expression of CrossFit, we aim to excel in any and every thing outside of our gym. We use CrossFit to make us better at sports, jobs, relationships, health, and life, instead of focusing on being better at CrossFit, itself. The spring season gives many of our athletes a great opportunity to showcase the skills and strengths they developed and a lot of you did just that.

Mr. Carey ran a 5k. Jennifer Banet made varsity softball as a Freshman. Katie Bromm made States in track. But there is one athlete that stepped up this season more than anyone else.

The Athlete of the Spring for 2015 goes to Jacob Zelenak.

Allow me to explain...

I can say with almost one hundred percent certainty that no athlete has put in a better consecutive seasons of work that JZ did in the Fall and Winter. In six months, he went from that scrawny little kid who tried his darndest to cling to Sap and Jason in workouts to undeniably our best male CrossFit athlete we have ever coached. Excluding no one. Heavy lifts: check. Bodyweight movements: check. Running: check. Metcons: best teen in the Central East (by a landslide in some cases). But there was, and still partially is, one little nagging thing I was not sure he figured out: mental toughness. JZ fell into the class of athletes that got easily flustered when workouts weren't going well. And since CrossFit is a diagnostic tool for what we see in real life, I had a hunch this was also the case on the baseball field. As fate would have it, just such an opportunity presented itself for JZ this season.

Due to JZ's off-season transformation into a freak show, his coaches took notice and penciled him in pre-season as the starting centerfielder on a team that was ranked in the top 5 in the state. Excited and as well-prepared as he had ever been, JZ began the season even better than he expected. But a few weeks in, he found himself in a major slump. And after a lousy showing on the team's trip to Florida, he got benched. Four years from now, he might look at that moment as the single best thing that ever happened to him.

While I am not as experienced as most coaches, I have worked with a very wide variety of athletes in multiple sports, as well as CrossFit. One thing I noticed to be unfortunately common is the lack of competitiveness in young athletes; they are intense and motivated when they are winning, but when something does not go as planned, they tank. We have had a few in our ranks as well. For about two weeks, it looked like JZ was going to follow suit. But once he faced the reality that it was on him, not the coaches, that he was not playing, he took the responsibility to make up for lost reps outside of practice.

During this Champions Club spring season, JZ made the tough choice to cut back a little on CrossFit workouts and instead added extra baseball time. He routinely stayed after practices to get extra swings with his coaches. And when he came here, he made regular use of the Marc Pro during the 7 pm session then brought the tee and bucket of balls out to practice more once everyone left the gym. He had to be ready in case he got another chance.

To be the best, it's more about what you give up than what you put in. I'm sure there were times this spring where JZ sacrificed being home with his family, being good at CrossFit, and being a good friend because he knew work needed to be done. Those are very tough choices to make and ones that most people don't even know about. But it was also the first step to try to do everything he could to make his situation better. I think JZ handled in-season training about as well as any athlete I can remember (save for Emma) and it ended up paying off. While he never got his starting spot back, JZ's off the field work helped him make the most out of the scarce opportunities he did have - finishing off the season batting over .400, serving as their go-to base runner and highlighted by scoring the winning run in Stevenson's district final thriller over Chippewa Valley.

"Straight up, that was the hypest game I've ever been a part of" - JZ after the 2-1 win over Chipp.

As much as it sucks, failure is unavoidable in sports. Since there are more travel and AAU teams now (and, frankly, less cuts) it seems to me that failure is diluted because, "Hey! My coach sucks but I'll just play with a different one in the summer!" This instantly eliminates the need for a work ethic and slowly kills competitiveness. As it so happens, JZ also plays for the top travel team in the state during the summer. He could have easily pouted this spring and wasted away on the bench blaming the coach, the fans, the weather, and (my favorite) "politics." But two months ago, he faced the reality of the situation and made the absolute best of it. And now, on June 7, 2015, he is better than he would have been had tanked. For that reason, he is Athlete of the Spring - edging our Erika Banet and her CrossFit rebirth.