Week Three in Review: South Central

March 12, 2012

Dave Re

In contrast to the consistency on the women's Leaderboard, the men's competition shows much more fluctuation in the South Central.

In the backs of everyone's minds, the possibility of a relatively long time domain and classic CrossFit workout has existed since the Open began. Open Workout 12.3 delivered it in spades. If 12.2 scrambled the Leaderboard, 12.3 percolated sevearl well known CrossFitters to the top in the South Central Region, and some leaders are starting to emerge.

Where the first two workouts focused on simplicity and a single movement, 12.3 stressed three core CrossFit movements – the box jump, the push press, and toes-to-bar – and required the athlete to be willing to just keep moving through 18 minutes of metabolic pain.

Some patterns have emerged on the South Central Leaderboard. Repeating her first place performance from 12.2, Azadeh Boroumand sweated through 467 reps to take the Region's top spot in 12.3. Another woman grinding her way to the top, Brista Mayfield (CrossFit 380) was only eight toes-to-bar behind Boroumand with 459 reps.

Amanda Schwartz (Premier CrossFit) completed her box jumps in her 13th round to finish 12 push presses off of Mayfield’s score at 447. These three women all have two top-five finishes across the three workouts.

Scores were even closer in the Men's competition. Jason Hoggan and veteran competitor Drew Bignall both turned in 443 reps to tie for 1st place in the Region. Racking up his second top-10 finish, Jacob Theriot (CrossFit Lake Charles South) only trailed the leaders by two box jumps to finish with 441 reps. Trailing Theriot by a single rep was another CrossFit Lake Charles South athlete, Cody Spell. This is Spell's first top-10 finish.

El Paso's Get Lifted broke their streak of consistent 3rd place finishes to take 1st place in 12.3 with 2391 reps. Bayou City CrossFit followed 132 reps behind to take 2nd place with 2259. Close behind them was the CrossFit Central Competitors team with 2242.

We have quite a race developing for the top spots in Region, especially for the Individual Women. Riding on the back of a 4th place finish in 12.3, Janet Black (Atomic CrossFit) breaks her two workout tie with CrossFit Austin's Stacey Magnesio to move up two spots to 1st place in the Region after three workouts with 21 points.

Magnesio finished 8th in 12.3, which was enough to bump her up a spot to 2nd place, trailing Black by four points at 25. Previously 2nd, Candice Ruiz (Iron Horse CrossFit) drops back a spot to 3rd place on the back of a 14th place 12.3 performance, giving her a total of 28 points.

Trailing Ruiz by only four points at 32, Boroumand is charging straight to the top with two 1st place finishes in a row. Rounding out the top five is Mayfield, who is only two points behind Boroumand with 34 points. In fact, there are only 31 points separating the women in the top 10. Clearly, this is still anyone's Open to win.

In contrast to the consistency seen on the women's Leaderboard, the men show much more fluctuation. Taking advantage of his 1st place finish in 12.3, Hoggan moves up a place to 1st with 47 points as Michael Barousse (Ragin' CrossFit) drops back to 3rd with 78 points after a 37th place finish in 12.3. Following Hoggan up the Leaderboard, Courtney Wuistinger moves up to 2nd place from 3rd with 61 points.

Stacked up right behind Barousse, Jesse Haines (CrossFit Garland) occupies 4th place with 80 points, having not yet finished in the top 10 in any of the first three workouts. Taking advantage of a 7th place finish in 12.3, Matt Brisebois (CrossFit Flower Mound) moves up right behind Haines to 5th place with 81 points.

Interestingly, 81 points is also the spread between 1st and 10th place on the men's Leaderboard. While that seems to be less tight of a race than the women, every man in the top 10 has at least one finish at 34th place or worse. All it takes is one or two of those to completely change the Leaderboard, at this point.

Breaking one more tie in the Region, Get Lifted edges two points in front of CrossFit Central Athletes to occupy 1st place in the team competition in the South Central Region with seven points to nine.

Bayou City CrossFit remains in 3rd place with 14 points. CrossFit Strong drops out of 4th place due to a 20th place finish in 12.3, opening the door for CrossFit Dallas Central to move up a spot into 4th place with 21 points. Remaining in 5th place with 28 points, CrossFit Waco remains solidly in the hunt.

All five of these teams finished the Open in the top 10 in the South Central Region in 2011. Bayou City CrossFit, CrossFit Waco, and CrossFit Dallas Central took the top three spots at the 2011 South Central Regional competition and went to the CrossFit Games. With 39 points separating the top 10 teams, we could still see a large amount of movement between any number of solid, highly skilled teams before the end of the 2012 Open.

In the Masters 45-49 Division, Ken Cutrer lost some ground in 12.3, falling back to 19th place after a 54th place finish. Cliff Lewis picked up eight places on the field with a 10th place finish, moving up to 24th.

Scott Patenaude slides back six places in the Masters 50-54 Division to occupy 65th place, after a 121st place, 232-rep performance.

Continuing her climb up the Masters Women 55-59 Leaderboard, Darlene Price finished in 8th place in 12.3. She earned 318 reps, moving another four places up the stack to 11th place.

With only two workouts left in the 2012 Open, it's anyone's game in all three of the races for the South Central Regional, and the programming for the last two weeks is anyone's guess. 

*The scores and rankings are unofficial until Tuesdays at 5 p.m., PT.