CrossFit Athletic Group

A month ago, we made this post calling for someone, ANYONE looking to sign up for the 10 am session this summer. These kids answered the call. From three completely different neighborhoods, schools, and grades, they all converged to take our attendance over the 50 mark.

Elle was in our 10 am session for a brief stint in 2013, until we moved her to the 11 am session to be with the Trips. Not because she wasn’t moving perfectly, because Elle always moves perfectly. It was because she was only in 6^th grade! Maria joined us the following spring. She’s from my neck of the woods, and to this day I don’t remember how her mom found out about us. Maria stuck with Elle in the workouts although she was a little more about speed and a little less about keeping her crazy flexible limblets in control.

Then the fall came, and while Elle disappeared off to school, Maria stuck around. She kept bugging us to use more than the 5 pound dumbbells. We said no. Then all of a sudden little Maria turned into a beast. Her form started becoming consistent and we quickly transitioned to using a barbell. It was around that time she brought us Madelyn: one of the most athletic and least flexible middle school girls I have come to know. Her parents were so on board with us that we knew she would come back in the spring after she finished her season on the boy’s lacrosse team. Yep, Madelyn was beating the boys up on the lacrosse field, all 6-foot, 35 pounds of her. Still, when Maria randomly pulled up late to a 6 pm session in May and Madelyn strolled casually behind her, we breathed a sigh of relief. Since then, Madelyn has been improving as quickly as we thought she would, even though Maria forgets to pick her up most days!

So as of late May, we had these three future sassy eighth graders in mind for our 10 am session. Then we found out that Rachael Kroll, seemingly this enigma that just appeared out of nowhere, had a family. And that family included a mysterious younger sibling that turned out to be Robert Kroll.

Robert went through fundamentals right before the summer was to officially start. Even though most fundamentals kids join another session after they graduate from “Fran,” we decided to have him join our 10 am crew to get some testosterone in the group. I’m pretty sure Robert mitotically split from Rachael to form an identical boy version of the cool, soft-spoken Kroll that we know and love. His few differences that lead me to believe he might be of some other super-human species is that he cannot jump rope to save his life (just ask him) and that he is freaking fast. His group workout during fundamentals was the hill, and he had the fastest time of the day. He sprinted from the bottom to the top in less than 8 seconds. Then he almost puked. I guess that’s what you get for eating Coney Island before a session!

After I finished torturing him in fundamentals, Robert somehow convinced three of his soccer teammates from De LaSalle to join him for the summer as well. All of a sudden our session of three turned into seven. The three new boys, Zach, Shane, and Nick, are all just as sly, and you can catch them joking around during the warm-up if I walk too far away from them. These four freshmen are also in soccer conditioning three times a week, so they are only able to make it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Zach and Nick also came to our first theme workout on Saturday, where they found out how crazy I really am. They like “tough” workouts, and all four of them will be putting in great effort this summer.

Finally, on the second day of summer Alexis stopped by to watch our 1:30 crew suffer through that box jump/handstand push-up chipper. Two days later she dragged her younger brother Zach in and decided to join pretty much on the spot. Alexis is now a sophomore soccer player at Saginaw Valley and a recent graduate from Lamphere, where Zach is a rising sophomore on the football team. As most football kids typically do, Zach hated being dragged to CrossFit and not touching any weights, but I think he’s warmed up to it a little more now that he’s been putting in work. In fact, between him and Alexis, they probably logged 1,000 push-ups in the first two weeks. Alexis has perfect attendance since she officially joined last Monday, and Zach is close behind even though he has football workouts right before he comes in. These athletes fell into our lap and we are more than happy to have them.

 We have quite the lineup of athletes at this session. Look to see them at the top of the Beast Mode charts coming soon!