Marne Week CrossFit competition tests perseverance, heart

Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Mary Katzenberger | Spc. Sarah Bailey, a combat medic assigned to 703rd Brigade Support Battalion, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, completes a thruster, June 26, on the second day of a CrossFit competition held during Marne Week at Caro Gym on Fort Stewart, Ga.  

FORT STEWART, GA, UNITED STATES

06.25.2012

Story by Staff Sgt. Mary Katzenberger 

4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs

FORT STEWART, Ga. – Every droplet of sweat that landed on the floor mats, every soaked T-shirt and every face screwed up in expressions of exertion and pain demonstrated the intensity of the Marne Week CrossFit competition, held June 25-28, at Caro Gym on Fort Stewart, Ga.

The tournament, hosted by soldiers assigned to the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, pitted 21 male teams against one another and 12 female teams in brutal struggles of muscular failure and endurance. Each team consisted of three participants.

Spc. Sarah Bailey, a combat medic assigned to the 703rd Brigade Support Battalion, 4th IBCT, said the competition was challenging and that it fostered teamwork amongst her fellow competitors.

“You have to come in here and figure out what the workout is and then figure out everyone’s strengths and weaknesses,” she said. “If someone’s struggling the others have to kind of step in and pick up the weight—literally—and move forward.”

Bailey said participating in the tournament boosted her morale because CrossFit has become such a competitive sport.

“[Because] you don’t really know what’s going on [until the morning of the tournament] you have to be prepared for everything,” she said. “You always have to be on your game and physically, you want to be in as top a shape as you can.”

Staff Sgt. Darrell Dupree, a cannon crew member assigned to Battery B, 1st Battalion, 76th Field Artillery Regiment, 4th IBCT, agreed and said the competition increased his unit’s esprit de corps.

“Everybody’s there with the same goals [and] the same outlook,” Dupree said. “It’s not about how much weight you can bench press or how much weight you can squat, it’s about how many repetitions you can pump out over a broad spectrum of time and at the same time work together to achieve a goal.”

Dupree said the competition was about perseverance.

“It’s all about heart,” Dupree said. “It’s the same concept as being on a mission in Iraq or Afghanistan—[there’s] an established goal that we’ve got to meet and we’ve got to get there in a certain time.”

The male team from 1-3 Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 1st Heavy Brigade Combat Team, and the female team from 83rd Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear Battalion, 3rd Sustainment Brigade, blasted through the four-day competition to be named Fort Stewart’s most functionally fit teams of soldiers.

• Date Taken: 06.25.2012
• Date Posted: 06.28.2012 16:59
• Story ID: 90789
• Location: FORT STEWART, GA, US