On Thursday, Aug. 3, while the individual division was in North Park sweating through the second test of the 2023 NOBULL CrossFit Games, former individual athletes Sam Dancer, Scott Panchik, and Stacie Tovar were inside the Coliseum finishing the seventh test of the masters division, Endure the Coliseum.
Dancer, Panchik, and Tovar became household names when they were individual competitors, and now they’re proving longevity is attainable in our sport.
Dancer first appeared at the CrossFit Games in 2014, and went on to accumulate three team appearances and one individual. He is famously known for his 655-lb deadlift at the 2014 CrossFit Games.
Panchik is a nine-time individual Games veteran, starting the legacy of the Panchik brothers in 2012.
Tovar is one of the longest-standing CrossFit Games athletes, first qualifying in 2009 and competing in the individual division for eight years.
Although these athletes helped shape the Sport of Fitness, as the years went by the younger generation overtook the individual and team divisions. But that didn’t deter Dancer, Panchik, and Tovar away from competition. Once they were ready to hand over the reins to the next generation, they joined the age-group division as masters athletes.
Age-group athletes before the Cross-Country 5K | Photo by Wendy Nielsen
The Evolution of Competition
“It’s just tight to be out here competing, period,” Dancer said after coasting to a win in Endure the Coliseum, his massive quads providing power that left his competitors in awe. “It’s been a good three years since I’ve been out on the competition floor. It’s a place that I feel most like myself.”
Panchik, too, was in awe — but it wasn’t of Dancer and his subhuman strength; it was of the other seven people competing alongside him and of the adaptive athletes who had gone in the heats before.
“I can’t say it enough — these athletes are incredible,” Panchik said. “I’m watching these adaptive athletes … to see them doing what they are doing with the adversity that they face, that is what our sport is about.”
Men's 35-39 athlete Scott Panchik and Boys' 14-15 athlete Leonardo Cruz | Photo by Amy Wong
For Tovar, the return to the competition floor after a five-year retirement brought about both a new perspective and new training methods. Long gone were the days of multiple met-cons and lifting sessions, instead replaced with group classes at 9 a.m., managing her gym, her family, and her body in a different way.
The last test, Final Positions, added depth to Tovar’s thoughts.
“I think I might have been in the same lane or close to it to the year I put my shoes on the floor, but I kind of left that old Stacie behind,” Tovar said. “I have a new body. I’m a new person. I have a lot more things going on in my life right now than I did then. I didn’t really focus on that that much. I just kind of did what I do.”
Stacie Tovar of CrossFit Omaha | Photo by Adam Bow
New Division, Same Community
The camaraderie among the age-group athletes means Dancer isn’t afraid to seek out athletes like Jason Grubb — a now four-time masters champion taking the championship title in the 45-49 division for a third-straight year.
“It could be, ‘How’s the temperature out there?’ ‘Would you recommend this or that?’ ‘Did you break?’ Little tips and stuff,” Dancer said. “I really admire him personally, too. Athletically, he’s a savage but he’s also a really good dude and I trust him.”
As the Sport of Fitness grows in age, some athletes will continue on to the older divisions while some will decide to retire from competitive CrossFit.
“I get why people have to full-on hang it up. I have a similar competitive spirit. It’s painful to let that aspect of you die and not be considered one of the best in the Open, individual division,” Dancer said. “I want to encourage other athletes who are starting to kind of trickle into those later years — I’m not calling them old — I just want people to know there’s a lot of fitness left in the tank and I hope I can be a good testimony to that, that you can still get down, you can still have a lot of fun.”
Sam Dancer of CrossFit Invictus | Photo by Joy Silva
While Panchik agreed with Dancer, he also enjoys how the sport has changed lives for the better across the board.
“Everybody walks a little bit of a different life in their CrossFit journey, and some of us were fortunate enough to get started early, and some of us late,” Panchik said. “But what’s really, really great about our sport is you can start at any time and that’s the beginning of your journey. You’re going to see growth, you’re going to see progress each and every day.
“To see those athletes that are coming into the sport even later in life, and they’re doing things that they didn’t do 10, 20 years ago. You look at their body types when they were in their 20s and 30s and they look like superheroes in their 40s and 50s. I think that just speaks so much volume of what CrossFit is about and who we are.”
New Friends
Jason Grubb may have been fanboying just a little when he got to athlete check-in for the 2023 NOBULL CrossFit Games.
After a year of DMs and texting, Grubb, a veteran of the masters divisions, and Dancer, a “legend of legends” as Grubb described him, finally met in person. And it’s been a bromance that has little to do with on-field success.
Dancer runs the not-for-profit Dancer Love Foundation, which “empowers individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities through fitness, education, and love.” And Grubb is the CEO of Bolder Athlete, a training program for masters athletes.
Before this year’s Games, Bolder Athlete put out an incentive to all of the 2023 NOBULL CrossFit Games masters athletes — win a test, get a $50 bonus. But as the week progressed, Grubb had some of the winners ask to return the money with a catch: donate it to a charity.
Following his heat in Wednesday’s Endure the Coliseum, Grubb went searching for Dancer. Finding him warming up on an Echo Bike in the bowels of the Coliseum, Grubb leaned into Dancer’s ear, not for insider tips, but for even better news.
“I just went up and asked Sam, ‘Can we give the event win prizes to your charity?’” Grubb said. “He got off the bike and hugged me.”
Dancer knew how much this would mean to his charity.
“If you haven’t seen James Foster, he’s one of our Down syndrome athletes at our program,” Dancer said. “A little bit of money goes a long way with that. You might have seen that conversation happen and it had nothing to do with sport but everything to do with (Grubb’s) heart.”
Jason Grubb | Photo by Adam Bow
It takes courage to close a successful chapter of your life. But it leaves room for new opportunities. The building blocks of the Sport of Fitness are still making waves in CrossFit.
“I’m honored to be here with the athletes, even who aren’t the Scott Panchiks and Stacie Tovars; these are incredible athletes that we are up against,” Dancer continued. “Just because they don’t have the same amount of notoriety that a Tovar has, or a Scott has, they are still very, very fit competitors. I hope people will consider it rather than just straight hanging it up.”
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