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CoSIDA.com/CoSIDA360 Magazine Archive
Note: This story appeared in the Summer 2020 September edition of CoSIDA 360 Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.
Join The Next 10-Week CoSIDA Fitness Challenge
(Starts September 14)
Step 1: Email Jeremy Rosenthal at jr359@indiana.edu to be placed on a team.
Step 2: Join the fun at Facebook.com/groups/CoSIDAFitnessChallenge
Success Stories
The CoSIDA Fitness Challenge team competition has been a highlight for many SIDs whose lives are being changed for the better, 10 weeks at a time.
by Mex Carey – Michigan State University, Associate Director Athletic Communications
During this unprecedented time in the world and unprecedented time in college athletics, the one thing everyone has craved is a sense of normalcy.
We want to get back to our offices, back to our practices, to our interviews, to our games, to our travel and to our non-stop hours on weeknights and weekends from September to May that are commonplace for all sports information directors.
College athletics came to an abrupt halt in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic and since then, life hasn’t been the same.
Indiana University assistant media relations director Jeremy Rosenthal, a life-long runner who has completed four marathons and has championed the annual CoSIDA 5K run, stepped in and wanted to do something to help out.
Because of the success of the annual 5K run at the convention each year and the interest that had been generated through the Fitness Challenge in the last two years, he wanted to come up with a way to keep people together and motivated as many were quarantined at home.
That sprang the first CoSIDA Fitness Team Challenge, which began in late March and culminated with the June Virtual 5K.
“This was the first year we had teams,” Rosenthal said. “I think the team component really helped bring people together and give them people to engage with, especially during the quarantine. I think people found motivation and also because of the quarantine had a little more flexibility in their schedules to be able to get out of the house and be more active.”
Jeremy Rosenthal of Indiana (pictured with his parents) is the organizer of the CoSIDA Fitness Challenge.
The success of the first Challenge — won by the team called Cirque de Sore Legs, captained by San Diego State’s Maddie Heaps for those keeping score at home — and the on-going work-from-home situation allowed for a second competition, with interest growing and the number of teams increasing from five to six and individuals from 80 to over 100.
Each team has 16 individuals and the first team competition was calculated by most minutes per person per team over the 10 weeks. Within the first Challenge was a competition during the Virtual 5K, also won by Cirque de Sore Legs. The second leg of the Team Challenge now has six teams and the team that was at the bottom of the standings the first go-round — Better at Running up a Tab, captained by Olivia Coiro of Syracuse and Chelsey Chamberlin of LSU — is now leading the second round.
The feeling of camaraderie among teams, who have Zoom sessions together or use WhatsApp to text, as well as the fun-loving trash talk has taken it to a level Rosenthal did not expect.
“It has meant a lot to me to see how much everyone has embraced the challenge,” he explained. “My goal was to create a community of support and encouragement around fitness and it’s been fun and uplifting to see the enthusiasm people are bringing to this challenge.”
The ability to have a place to share your goals and to find people who would help encourage you as you moved toward your goals are among the reasons the Challenge has been so embraced by its members. Some people joined to help continue something they had already started, some to start something new, some to get back to a better sense of health. More than anything, they all joined for a sense of camaraderie and a feeling of normalcy.
St. Louis area members came together in June to run the Virtual 5K.
“All of this has been building a better me.”
Sometimes you need a friend to help you along the way and Vassar College sports information director Amie Canfield found just the right person when her venture started.
Canfield was sitting in her apartment one day and saw an ad on TV for a cost-effective membership for six months for Beachbody on Demand, so she signed up for it. Soon after, Canfield was on a Facebook group page and Amanda Radtke of North Florida, the co-captain for her Weapons of Fat Destruction team, mentioned that she was part of the program as well.
“The two of us were connected, I changed my whole subscription, she became my coach and walked me through the whole process,” Canfield said. “She got me into that and pushed me to want to do better. Her always being there for me was a huge part of it.”
Canfield was in the midst of her first 21-day session with Beachbody when she read about the Team Challenge and joined in, figuring she was already in the process and this would give her another group to share with and to encourage her in the process.
“It’s huge,” Canfield said of the encouragement provided by being part of the challenge. “For me, especially being alone from January until July, this has been helping me have that accountability. Yeah, I could skip a workout, but is that the best thing for me?”
Canfield is part of two other Facebook groups, one created by Radtke, and another that is specific to Beachbody and shares her workouts and progress on those pages.
“I’m not just doing it for me, but I’m doing it to give hope to others that were just like me a couple of months ago, that didn’t think they could do it, didn’t think they could get through a 30-minute routine,” Canfield said. “Just being able to see everybody and what you’re doing, no matter how many minutes you’ve logged, the fact that you’re just trying and putting in effort, right now, that’s all you can do. And honestly, it’s nice to have people comment. It makes you feel good about what you’ve done.”
Canfield has been staying at her parent’s house in Vermont during part of the quarantine and has added fitness work in their pool in addition to healthier eating, Beachbody workouts and walks. She’s lost 25 pounds since June and is more than a third of the way to her goal of losing 60 pounds.
The whole process has allowed Canfield to feel better about herself in several different ways.
“It’s not just physically, it’s also mentally,” she said. “Physically, it’s that nice burn after a workout that I never really appreciated before. I find myself doing things that I couldn’t do before. Just being willing to put myself out there, that has not happened in the last couple of years.
“It’s made me take a really good look at things. All of this has been building a better me.”
“If I put my mind to it, I can do anything.”
Alan Babbitt, the sports information director at Hope College in Michigan, was already on his own journey when the team portion of the CoSIDA Fitness Challenge began in March.
His weight-loss journey is one that has seen him lose almost 76 pounds and most of that was through diet. Babbitt admitted that he has never really been an active person, but the idea of joining a group of his colleagues was intriguing.
“I needed something to push me over the finish line and I had already looked at doing a couch to 5K,” Babbitt said via Zoom. “I started that when I was working from home and when this (Challenge) came along, I knew I could continue it, that this would be a way for me to have some fun and meet some people as well.
Babbitt, who has been at Hope for eight years, trained for his 5K by running a three-block loop through his neighborhood in Western Michigan. His wife and two daughters were out on the street with encouraging signs and draped a medal over his neck at the finish line.
“There’s nothing that beats that feeling,” Babbitt said. “My wife and daughters were proud of me and supported me along the way. It’s hard to beat that feeling. It just felt really good.”
Alan Babbitt of Hope College was cheered on by his daughters as he completed the CoSIDA Virtual 5K.
Babbitt’s team, Better at Running up a Tab, has had ongoing conversations on WhatsApp in order to keep everyone connected and together, and to help encourage one another.
“Our group, the conversation is never-ending,” Babbitt said. “We’re having fun with what we’re doing, what we’re trying to do and just checking on each other. There’s that accountability that helps each of us. We can encourage each other and when we had someone who was hurt, we’d try to make up for them.
“The best part is we had a mix of people like me, who were just starting doing it, and some people who had been doing it forever and we just help each other in that way. That makes it more fun and it’s not a drag to do an hour of exercise, it’s the feeling of excitement to help the team out.”
Babbitt, who was so encouraged by his running that he pushed himself and completed a pair of 10K runs during quarantine, plans to continue this whenever life begins to get back to normal.
“I feel better when I do it,” Babbit explained. “Mentally I feel better, physically I feel better. I don’t want to yo-yo and it’s really easy to do and I’ve done it before.
“The best part of all of this is that it was a reminder that I can do anything I put my mind to.”
The Start of a New Journey
For Justin McIlwee, sports information director at Hollins University in Virginia, the CoSIDA Fitness Challenge was sort of the start of a journey, as he will be going through weight-loss surgery next summer.
“My weight is something I’ve battled with my entire life,” McIlwee said. “I’ve always been a big guy. There wasn’t anything I had to do prior, but it was just starting getting into that better lifestyle where you’re working out five, six, seven times a week and eating better.
“I’m very competitive and having the support of everyone on the team, it’s helped me get into that lifestyle. I’m working out 25-30-40 minutes every day knowing that in a year from now, I’m going to lose all of this weight.”
The Facebook page for the CoSIDA Fitness Challenge has become not only a place to post your workouts or what you’re doing, but it’s also a motivating factor.
“When I post something about a workout, I know I’m going to get support from 10 or 12 of my teammates or 10 or 12 other people in the competition,” he said. “It’s given me this confidence that I can go out and do this stuff and I don’t have to be a world-class athlete to do it. I’m just going out and doing my best.”
McIlwee, who was an assistant at Millsaps College in Mississippi in 2018, had been diagnosed with diabetes before arriving at Hollins in 2019. By the time the first set of the Team Challenge had been completed in early June, he was below the threshold and no longer diabetic.
Justin McIlwee has changed his lifestyle and is no longer diabetic.
“Getting into this and working on the lifestyle changes little bit-by-little bit has really helped,” McIlwee said. “I’ve always loved sports and playing football and baseball and that’s actually the goal, to get down to a weight where I go back and play in a baseball or flag football league, but being in this group has given me the push I needed.”
His team, Weapons of Fat Destruction, captained by Amanda Radtke of North Florida and Danielle Percival of Piedmont College, has been a key part of his participation in the challenge.
“Looking at everyone on my team, they’re all in better shape than I am,” McIlwee said. “It hasn’t been discouraging to see that I can’t keep up with them. It’s actually been a confidence builder because I know I’m not doing as much as they are but they’re rooting me on as if I’m running marathons every day.
McIlwee’s start to workouts were originally campus walks with his swim coach, Ned Skinner. Since he’s been working from home, he and his wife, Morgan, have been walking and doing videos through a group called Body Project.
“We’re hitting this together,” he said. “We’ve been in this since Day One. We’ve talked about it that we’re influences on each other. If I have a bad day, I’m a bad influence on her and when we have good days, we end up being good influences for each other.
“And when I post my workouts, to see people giving me congratulations from all over the country, saying great job or that I’ve inspired them…never in my life have I ever considered myself an inspiration as far as fitness. To see that just makes me realize that we’re all in this together and the bigger picture is that we’re all trying to make each other better and to push each other and support each other.”
The Best He’s Felt in Years
Jim Powers, the Coordinator of Athletic Communications at Maryville University in St. Louis, has been a high school basketball referee for 10 years. He had taken a couple of years off from running up and down the court because of work and during that time, he put on weight.
He came back to the court two years ago, but he wasn’t feeling like he used to. In January of 2020, he made a commitment to start getting back into shape. And like many of his colleagues, when the winter and spring athletic seasons were canceled, he needed an outlet.
Powers found it in the CoSIDA Fitness Challenge.
“This year, I was really slugging and I just knew I couldn’t continue this cycle,” Powers said. “That was the point where I said, I’m 52-years-old and I just can’t carry this much weight.”
Powers had lost 10 pounds between January and through the end of February before COVID-19 hit. The fact that he had to work from home was a blessing in disguise for him because it allowed him to create time in his schedule to take care of himself.
He began by walking in his neighborhood, taking 30-minute jaunts. And then started doing workouts through his local Planet Fitness, taking advantage of on-line offerings to do his work at home. When his gym opened back up, he began to head over there to hit the treadmill and started adding weights into his workouts.
“It was really then that I started to see some of the effects, toward the end of April as we were in the first Challenge,” Powers explained. “I put a button-down shirt on and normally it was a little snug, but now it was loose. I realized I’m doing something right.”
Indeed he was. Powers had lost 27 pounds and, into August, he was down 41 pounds.
“It’s turned into a habit,” Powers said. “It’s my daily routine. Normally, when I’d go to the gym, it was begrudgingly. Now it’s like I’m racing to the gym.”
The support of his teammates — Quarantine Dream — and his athletic director at Maryville, Lonnie Folks, has helped him become a better him. And he doesn’t plan on stopping.
“It feels really good,” Powers said. “It’s the best I’ve felt in years. A lot of it is the support I get, everyone on our team, everyone in the Challenge, everyone at Maryville — it’s a real motivating factor.
“There’s no doubt that having the group and seeing what everyone else is doing is helping me. There’s a whole dynamic about the group. Why do the minimum when we can push ourselves. That’s the biggest thing. I never concentrated on me and now I am.”
SIDEBAR
The Fun of Competition and Camaraderie
Jay Stancil hiking with family.
Being part of a team was what drew Union College (Ky.) Director of Strategic Sports Communications Jay Stancil to the CoSIDA Fitness Team Challenge.
Stancil was working the NAIA national tournament for the Bulldogs men’s and women’s basketball teams when the shutdown started and when he returned home, it was to a feeling of “what’s next.”
“Being part of the team, in all honesty, with everything that’s happened this year, that’s been one of the best things to have, is this team competition,” Stancil said. “It’s been good to have a goal, good to have people you can communicate regularly with just to have the interaction. I’m not going to lie, when everything went down in mid-March, it got dark pretty quickly.”
Competitors in the CoSIDA Fitness Team Challenge got into it for a variety of reasons — some to start a fitness plan, some to continue one, others to get back on track. But the common thread for almost everyone was the camaraderie.
Stancil, who has run six marathons and completed a pair of 50K (just over 31 miles), joined for all of those reasons.
“It’s been really good especially for my mental health, to help me focus and give me a little more drive to work out,” Stancil said. “It’s helped get my running back on track and my overall fitness and well-being back on track.”
Stancil, co-captain of the Home Bodies team, has enjoyed being part of the team and the networking aspect of the challenge.
“It’s been neat because we’ve all become friends,” Stancil said. “We’ve got this group of teammates cheering us on and supporting us. When the teams were handed out, I only really knew one person, but it’s allowed us to meet and interact with people you may not have had the chance with otherwise.”
Always a runner, one of the aspects that Stancil has enjoyed hearing is the variety of activities people are doing, from yoga, to weightlifting to rucking (Dave Walters, formerly of Guilford College) and hiking.
“I’m not going to lie, one of my weakness has always been weights,” Stancil said. “Because I’ve had free time and my daughter is home, our family has started going on hikes together and it’s been great to share that with them. Not everyone is a runner so it’s good to see people doing different things and sharing all of these experiences with one another.”