Has qualified for second stage of CrossFit Games season
HARTFORD, Conn. — Wakefield’s Danielle Resha, owner of CrossFit 128 in Wakefield, has qualified for the East Regional taking place this Memorial Day weekend in Hartford, Conn. It is the second stage of the 2015 Reebok CrossFit Games season.
The top 20 females in the region (out of 12,000) are chosen to compete at the East Regional. The top five athletes from there move on to the CrossFit Games.
On top of that, Resha, after a two day combine recently in Washington, D.C., has been drafted to the Phoenix Rise, a team in the National Pro Grid League (NPGL) which is a new co-ed professional sport which airs on NBC Sports.
The former Warrior soccer goalie has played women’s football in the past. She was a kicker and backup running back for the Boston Militia, a team in the Women’s Football Alliance. She also played for the Boston Ravens, a team in the Eastern Football League. Resha, a 2011 WMHS graduate, was signed by the Ravens and was the first woman to play a down in the 51 years as a member of the league at the time.
According to the CrossFit Games website, the CrossFit Games are the world’s premier test to find the Fittest on Earth. They are world-renowned as a grueling test for the world’s toughest athletes and a thrilling experience for spectators. Since its inception in 2007, the CrossFit Games have become “one of the fastest growing sports in America,” according to Forbes.
The Games were created to fill a void — no other true test of fitness existed. From Ironman triathlons to the NFL, all other athletic events neglected to accurately test fitness. Even decathlons, while testing a relatively wide range of abilities, missed vital components of physical fitness.
The CrossFit Games events are made up of a broad range of functional movements. Functional movements move large loads, long distances, quickly. These movements also form the basis of our exercise program. Make no mistake — the CrossFit Games are designed to test, not train, fitness. The goal is to find the fittest athletes, not to produce an easily replicable workout program.
The Games season is broken up into three stages. The first stage is the Open. This five-week, five-workout competition is held in the early spring in CrossFit affiliates and garage gyms around the world. Workouts are released online each Thursday and athletes have until the following Monday to submit their scores. Anyone who’s at least 14 years old can sign up and join in the first stage of the CrossFit Games season. This year’s Open kicked off on Feb. 26.
The top athletes from each of the 17 regions qualify for the second stage of the competition — regionals. The regionals are live, three-day competitions that are held over three weekends in May. The top athletes from two or three regions combine and compete for the five qualifying spots for the CrossFit Games.
The season culminates in the 2015 Reebok CrossFit Games at the StubHub Center in Carson, Calif. At this point in the season, the field has been whittled down from hundreds of thousands of athletes in the Open to the fittest 40 men and 40 women in the world. The CrossFit Games rank the world’s fittest and determine which man and woman may be called the Fittest on Earth.
A key element to a fair test of fitness is the unknown and unknowable. Athletes cannot train for what they do not know. At each CrossFit Games, the athletes engage in a series of challenges unknown to them until right before the competition. The combination of highly trained athletes and unknown events makes for an explosive mix.
The Games are a playing field where the fittest athletes are given a chance to distinguish themselves through consistently exceptional performances. In a single weekend, the CrossFit Games test athletes’ capabilities across broad time and modal domains. A wide variety of different events are intentionally included. In the past, these have ranged from dusty hill sprints to sandbag carries to ocean swims and endurance events. Future events will include even more surprises.
In order to be satisfied that the CrossFit Games winners are truly the Fittest on Earth, they need to be confident the champions would also win other good tests of fitness.
The Games use a relative scoring system. That is, athletes are rewarded according to their placing in each event relative to their peers — not according to their absolute performance on that event. To the degree which we’ve done their job, the Games athletes are the 40 fittest men and 40 fittest women on Earth. All of them have qualified through multiple steps to get there. It’s up to the Games to determine who among them is the fittest.
Interest in this sport continues to increase, along with the size of the CrossFit community. Last year at this time, there were just more than 5,000 affiliates. Today, that has surpassed 11,000. 2015 promises to be a landmark year for the CrossFit Games.
