I grew up playing all kinds of sports: baseball, soccer, basketball, tae kwon do, you name it! I was kind of a “jack-of-all-trades” until high school when I chose to focus on one of them: basketball. Basketball quickly became life and eventually was my ticket to attend and play at the collegiate level at the US Air Force Academy.

Fast forward to basic cadet training: one of the most memorable speeches I remember during that time was given by a cadre (upperclassmen); he told us that regardless of whatever reason we came to the Academy, whether it was because it was our family tradition or we wanted to be pilots, the reason we stayed would probably change. At the time, I thought, “no way—I came here for basketball and that’s not going to change.”

Yet, after two years of basketball, I found myself so unhappy and deflated. The passion I once had for the sport had disappeared, and I knew in my heart that it was time to walk away. After long conversations with my coaches, I had made up my mind—I cleaned up my locker and walked away from the game that had been such a big part of my life.

I felt so lost, but those words from my cadre were cemented in my mind. I realized that there was so much more to being at the Academy than playing basketball. I decided to take full advantage of that opportunity, so it was at that time that I applied and was awarded the chance to go on a semester exchange to West Point.

While at West Point (spring 2012), I joined my company’s Sandhurst team—a competitive military skills team—because I needed a way to fill that competitive void that was now empty without basketball. I was one of two girls on a team with 8-10 guys. Our training regimen consisted of waking up at 0500 and going to the gym to lift before breakfast formation everyday. While we would be doing endless bicep curls and leg presses, I would see this group doing crazy workouts, flailing around on the pull-up bars and throwing barbells around for a few minutes at a time. I asked my team what they were doing and learned that they were doing “Crossfit”. That was my first introduction to this thing called “Crossfit” and eventually I began jumping in with them in the mornings every now and then to switch up the routine of dumbbell curls and leg presses.

When I got back to the Air Force Academy that summer, I asked around and eventually found my way to Falcon Crossfit: the Crossfit club run by cadets. My senior year, the cadet Crossfit gym actually got demolished, so we had to improvise a lot and the programming was sporadic—by that I mean we would look up WODs and see what looked painful and then all suffer through it together. Nonetheless, the challenge and the pain became an addiction!

After graduation in 2013, I became more committed to it when I could actually join a gym and get real coaching and training. After 2 years of Crossfit, the addiction turned into a passion. I got my Level 1 Certification in 2014 and started volunteering as a trainer at Lightning Crossfit, the military affiliate at Eglin AFB, before I PCSed to Wright Patt last fall. The rest has been history!

I could go on and on about how much I love Crossfit, but I can boil it down to 3 main reasons:

1. Crossfit quenches the competitive thirst that I’ve always had. Every day, I get to go into the gym and compete. Over time I’ve come to realize that the most important person I’m competing against is myself.

2. Crossfit constantly challenges me. Any time I master a new skill, there’s always another one to work on. Any time I hit a weight I never thought I would be able to do, I get to set my sights on the next weight. That constant challenge pushes me to get better every day, and with each challenge comes a sense of accomplishment when I can achieve it.

3. The most important one of all: the Crossfit community. The people in the gym are the most supportive and inspirational people around, and the sense of family and camaraderie that Crossfit has created is unlike that of any sport I’ve ever been around. I’ve been fortunate to be apart of 4 great affiliates now, and I feel so blessed to have met some great friends and mentors along the way. From an athlete’s perspective, I’ve made leaps and bounds of improvements due to the coaches I’ve had, teaching me and pushing me to be better. From a coach’s perspective, I love being able to share my passion with athletes and both teach and push them everyday.