Sault teen heading to national crossfit championships this summer

A 15-year-old crossfit enthusiast from Sault Ste. Marie will be competing against some of Canada’s elite crossfit athletes in Vancouver this summer – and she qualified by posting videos of herself online. 

Erica Schryer recently completed five crossfit events in six days – all of which have been uploaded to YouTube – in order to qualify for this year’s CanWest CrossFit Championships, slated to take place in British Columbia June 5-7. 

“There’s a couple workouts you have to do, and you have to video them for proof,” Schryer told SooToday Thursday. “Once you’re done, you can put your scores in an online leaderboard and it’ll tell you what place you landed in, and if you made it.”

Schryer, representing the TMX Athletics training facility in the Sault, took home first place in her age category (girls 14-15) in order to punch her ticket to the national qualifier, while placing fifth overall for its sister event, the CanEast Games.

The Grade 10 Korah Collegiate and Vocational School student tells SooToday that qualifying for the national crossfit competition is like a “dream come true.” 

“It was really exciting, because I beat somebody that was placed 20th in the world in the biggest crossfit competition there is, and I beat her to come first in that competition,” she said. “I was pretty excited.”  

Schryer quit gymnastics in order to play hockey when she was 10 years old, but fell into the world of crossfit years later while using a local training facility for hockey conditioning.

“I did a couple crossfit classes, and he [crossfit coach] asked me which one I liked better,” she said. “I picked crossfit, and I’ve stuck with it ever since.”

Schryer says she enjoys crossfit because she gets a lot of satisfaction from pushing herself.

“I just really like being able to do everything and the results that you get from it - pushing yourself as hard as you can, and seeing what you’re capable of,” she said.