Fortitude Fitness NZ

For-Chella | Fortitude 2022 Member Awards

November 28, 2022
Uncategorized

The winners of our 2022 Member Awards were announced on Saturday night at our Christmas Party.

This year’s Fortitude Christmas party has been inspired by Coachella, aka For-chella 🥳🎡

The selection behind the Coachella theme was the creative freedom it allows. You can interpret the festival however you want 🤩 2022 has been a colourful year for Fortitude and our members deserve to be celebrated for all their achievements within the gym & even outside.

Big thanks to our For-Chella team – Ruth and Lagi for bringing this event to life ♥️ Also massive shout out to Bert & Salu for the spread contribution, Chels for the photos, the cleaning team/mamas (Tanya, Silia, Salu and Chance), big boss Ryan, our coaches, and our amazing members ♥️ Gotta love the community we have 😍

The Fortitude Family, by the looks of it, had a fantastic time!

This year our member awards were:

Most improved

Rookie of the year

Masters Athlete

Sportsmanship

Most committed to training

Member of the year

And a couple of funny ones:

Shut up Award

Won’t go home award

Shirt off Award

Apart from Member of the year the winners are all selected by the coaches. We each nominate someone and then get together and discuss who we feel deserves the award the most out of the nominees.

Most improved award:

Who has improved as an athlete the most in 2022. Who has progressed their fitness, their level of skill, their attitude to training, their work rate or their pain tolerance. Who has started lifting heavier, hitting more complex movements or pushing their boundaries a little more. Who ultimately has improved.

This year we have female and male categories.

The winners are Anna Wainwright and Christian Chappell

Anna Wainwright: a beautiful soul, a bright spark of positivity, and a person who has displayed immense courage by throwing themselves into uncomfortable challenges that they managed to thrive through. (Presented by Coach Antonia)

Christian Chappell: had the pleasure of introducing this person to function fitness racing and he has certainly come a long way in the past year. From falling on his arse trying to snatch and clean 30kg on the bar to well surpassing what I could accomplish within a year. This person is the epitome of consistency and HWPO, and as a result, inspires those around him to be better. (Presented by Coach Ry)

Rookie of the year:

(Presented by Coach Ry)

I’ve known this person for the past 2 half years. Known for his consistency. Consistently getting injured – shoulders knees toes and everything in between. He consistently attends classes and puts in the effort. This year he decided to step it up and enter competitive fitness racing. We won the In-house comp against Ra with AJ and placed 2nd at Two to tango with Anna. Without further ado ROOKIE OF THE YEAR goes to Jayden Matchitt.

Masters Athlete:

Our master member of the year – of all athletes over the age of 35…

This award goes to someone who has been consistent, considerate, kind and supportive and who has the bloody energiser bunny legs of power that never seem to tire:

Our Masters Athlete of the year is Juri Carminati.

Sportsmanship Award:

Members make our community and what a special community we have at Fortitude.

The Sportsmanship Award is to acknowledge the person who contributes to what we do as a community. To recognise those who are always there, in whatever capacity: competing, supporting, cheering or just being present. This member walked through our doors in 2019 and since that day she has exemplified what it means to be a Fortitude member. You will not see her sulk or quit in the face of a challenge and her consistent efforts and improvements are something we can all aspire to. We have awarded the Sportsmanship Award to Lagi Elekana.

Most committed to training award:

This award is to recognise the individual who has gone above and beyond to stay committed and consistent with their training. Who prioritises it, makes time for it and gets it in regardless. This year there was a clear winner;

Tanya Middleton

This person is here Monday to Saturday every week. She is here early in the morning before us 5.30am coaches on the bike warming up. She stays after class to stretch and cool down on the bike and then does extras that she has asked to be specifically programmed for her. She is here doing the class workouts, the online comp workouts and prepping for the various in person comps she has signed up for. She doesn’t understand the meaning of a rest day. Even before upcoming comps us coaches struggle to get her to take a day or two off so she can compete at her best. Tanya you are goals! I hope to be half the CrossFit athlete you are as I continue on in the journey of life. (Presented by Coach Letitia and Kavita)

It is a no-brainer that Tanya is also the winner of the Won’t go home Award.

Shut-up award:

This award is a bit of a silly one but the recipient is someone who has been a part of this community for a long time and they are always involved in events and helping build relationships. They started their journey about the same time I did and I have learnt a lot from them, though I hope they have learned a bit more from me. They always have advice for others and are continuously helping push people but sometimes they have just a few too many words… and that’s why they have won the ‘shut up award’. So congratulations to…. Colin Tang!

Shirt-off award:

Clear winner: Michael Chung

Mike, Shirt off award and Coach Maddy

Member of the Year award:

This is the only award voted for by the members. This is where they get to tell us who they think is an epic Fortitude. Which of their peers makes them proud to be part of Fortitude, makes them want to work a little harder or be a little better. Who makes them feel welcome and at home in a class, who do them feel is a good ambassador for what we do.

A massive well done to everyone who got nominated. You have inspired or supported someone more than you realise.

So to the award;

Joint thirds are Anna and Lagi

Second is Tanya

First and your Fortitude Member of the Year 2022 Ruth Elekana

Ruth, Member of the Year. With Coach Ryan and Andi

Ruth is Fortitude through and through, a great athlete, consistently works hard, always around for a laugh and a chat. She is involved in most events this year, competes at every opportunity and is a good friend to members. While Ruth works exceptionally hard in her workouts, she still makes time to encourage and support her fellow Fortitude members. Through injuries, big changes and uncertainty, Ruth has maintained her enthusiasm and her sense of humour! Always encouraging. Very well deserved Ruth, you’re an Inspiration!

Message from Coach Ryan

I wanted to start off by saying It’s so cool to see everyone progress throughout the year and how much each and every one of you have grown in so many ways. Here’s a few examples: supporting a friend when in need, progressing in your career, achieving goals that you thought wasn’t possible, its all inspiring and I truely believe the environment we have here with the addition of our functional programming contributes massively and I hope to see you all achieve and grow more next year.

Coaches: I wanted to thank all the coaches for their efforts this year. A lot of their work goes unnoticed but coaching involves a lot more than just coaching. It’s being the hype man at 5:30 am when no one wants to be there or when everyone is half asleep trying to remember the warm up, mentoring athletes going through depression, helping athletes achieve goals that they thought was not achieve able, up skilling and putting in extra hours going through warm ups and programming, coming to competitions out of their own time and helping with mobility and injuries, so can all the following coaches come up. I’m truely grateful to have you guys be the fore face of fortitude and here’s a small little thank you present to show I do appreciate all you do. A special thank you to Andi for doing so much for me. She’s honestly such a huge help and I’m grateful for everything you do including beating me in workouts hahahaha.

Thank you Ruth, Lagi and Bert for organising For-chela and putting on an amazing feed.
Lastly the members for contributing in making this place what it is, you’re all a fantastic bunch and i hope 2023 will be a better year for you, me and Fortitude.

cheers
Fortitude Coaches

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