One of the more important changes to the 2015 Open was the inclusion of a Teen division. For the first time, athletes aged 14-17 had the opportunity to compete in one of four specific divisions:
14-15 Girls
14-15 Boys
16-17 Girls
16-17 Boys
Initially, teen athletes in the Open were competing for nothing more than placement in their division.
“The teenage division will have an overall Leaderboard showing all athletes between 14 and 17 years old who have not elected to compete with adult men and women. The teens will perform a different version of the Open workout than the adult male and female competitors. The winners of the teenage division will be crowned after the fifth and final week of the Open.”
–games.crossfit.com
The rules for teen participants went on to state that all athletes between the ages of 14-17 would be automatically entered into the Teen division. If they wanted to compete in the Individual or Team divisions—with the likely intention of qualifying for Regionals—they had to change their division by emailing support@crossfitgames.com before the end of score submissions for Open Workout 15.1.
So, those athletes faced a decision—try to be crowned as the victor (or at least a ‘podium’ finisher) of their Teen division, or struggle mightily in the adult division with the faint hope of qualifying for Regionals. As you might expect, most athletes chose to compete in the Teen division. However, some did decide to test their fitness against older competitors and see if they could finish in the top 20 of their region, granting them qualification to Regionals.
But during 15.4’s cool down show on March 19th, Dave Castro (Director of the CrossFit Games) revealed that for the first time ever, there would be a Teen competition at the CrossFit Games. Then, on April 4th, CrossFit made it official:
The CrossFit Games are the world’s premier test to find the Fittest on Earth. Since 2010, the Games have named the world’s fittest man, woman, team and masters athletes. This July, CrossFit will expand the search to find and name the world’s fittest teenagers.
Here’s what you need to know:
-The top 10 worldwide in each teenage division in the Open will be invited to compete at the CrossFit Games. That adds up to a total of 40 athletes across the four divisions (14-15 girls, 14-15 boys, 16-17 girls, 16-17 boys).
-There is no additional qualifier.
The qualified athletes will go directly from the Open to the Games.
The Teenage Competition will be held at the Track at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. Stay tuned for more information, including the competition dates, which will be released soon on Games.CrossFit.com.
It’s great that the CrossFit Games are moving to recognize the young, up-and-coming athletes of our sport. After all, they are the future of CrossFit. While we are yet to find out the format of the Teen competition at the Games this summer, one might anticipate it following the same design as the Masters competition, with all the events taking place on the track over the course of three days—Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
With that said, here are the Teen qualifiers for the 2015 CrossFit Games:
Boys 14-15
| 1 (23) | Angelo Dicicco |
| 2 (47) | Vincent L Ramirez |
| 3 (48) | Luke Pearson |
| 4 (91) | Thomas Gallant |
| 5 (97) | Tommy Schadl |
| 6 (116) | Tim Pearson |
| 7 (124) | Anthony Verderaime |
| 8 (134) | Abel Lucas |
| 9 (153) | Kristaps Simsons |
| 10 (154) | Yogev Meller |
Girls 14-15
| 1 (24) | Sydney Sullivan |
| 2 (43) | Lindsey Porter |
| 3 (54) | Megan Trupp |
| 4 (77) | Filippa Ferm |
| 5 (96) | Rachel McInnis |
| 6 (99) | Alina Lewandowski |
| 6 (99) | Romy Gold |
| 8 (103) | Taylor Babb |
| 9 (104) | Gabby Wells |
| 10 (111) | Brooklin Smith |
Boys 16-17
| 1 (53) | mickael sarrazin |
| 2 (67) | Daniel-Etienne Ikner |
| 3 (73) | Nicholas Paladino |
| 4 (77) | Luke Mayben |
| 5 (104) | Rees Machell |
| 6 (114) | Bryan Hernández |
| 7 (117) | James Kapacila |
| 8 (149) | Matt Cole |
| 9 (168) | Davis Combs |
| 10 (197) | Josh McMahon |
Girls 16-17
| 1 (51) | Allison Weiss |
| 2 (76) | Celia Gold |
| 3 (94) | Klaudia Dabrowska |
| 4 (117) | Ashleigh Wosny |
| 4 (117) | Nairobi Romero |
| 6 (129) | Nichole Marth |
| 7 (151) | Alli Parks |
| 8 (195) | Julianna Hasselbach |
| 9 (205) | Isabella Vallejo |
| 10 (227) | Liv Price |
Way to go Davis of CrossFit Eternal Davidson!!!