THE GREATEST MOMENT IN FLATliners HISTORY

The greatest moment in FLATliners history wasn’t an individual accomplishment.

It was the day the culture and the methodology that we had lived by made a stand against those who refused to give those dedicated to it their due credit.

It was a day where people who were overlooked, undervalued and underestimated followed a statement made earlier in the year at one of the hardest races you’ve never heard of, with a defining punctuation at one that most people have.

It was the day a group of women from a small gym in Illinois stood on the podium at the OCR World Championships alongside some of the biggest names the sport has ever produced.

Third place.

A distant third, according to the results.

But to me, it felt like first.

What most people don’t know is how unlikely many foolishly thought that podium really was.

Over the course of 2019 to 2022, I had heard every version of why our women, weren’t good enough.

Always from another woman, claiming to be leading the parade for the support of women. 

Too many unnecessary obstacle combinations and grip training.

Not enough focus on optimized running.

Too much focus on obstacle endurance, overkill for a sport beginning to pull away from challenge and innovation of obstacles.

Too much time spent on things other people considered unnecessary.

Even some athletes who had once been part of what we built eventually were convinced that what we were doing was irrelevant, and silently criticized and ridiculed those still invested in it.

Then came OCRWC 2022. 

The Canyon obstacle became the defining moment. An obstacle that was so difficult for many people, OCRWC actually made it easier on the second day of the OCRWC 2021 race weekend, the type of move that would become typical across all brands of the sport as they desperately tried to keep attendance respectable instead of respecting the essence of the sport itself.

But in 2022. it was back to it’s original and more challenging form.

And my girls were ready.

A team that had reached the obstacle ahead of us—and was expected by many to finish ahead of us—watched the race unravel there. The obstacle training that so many people believed we overtrained became the very thing that changed everything.

Because it turns out it doesn’t matter how fast you arrive at an obstacle if you can’t get through it.

Years of technique work.

Years of grip training.

Years of hearing that we focused too much on obstacles.

In a single moment, all of it mattered.

I can still remember watching Rory emerge from Canyon and realizing what was happening as she made her way to Erin and Bea and the course’s final stretch. 

The realization that, not only were they going to do it, but they were actually going to do it right in front of some of the people who held them to such low regard.

The realization that years of work, sacrifice, criticism, and doubt were about to culminate in a World Championship podium and that the people who had been most critical, could only stand by helplessly and watch.

I remember standing there with tears in my eyes as they stood proudly upon the podium. 

Not because we had won.

But because I knew exactly what those girls had overcome to get there.

I knew the cynicism and the circumstances and the relationships broken because of it, and I actually had a renewed sense of hope that we had accomplished the one feat capable of extinguishing the silent divide that was threatening to destroy everything we had built.

The countless criticisms nobody saw. From one of my girls being accused of “not pushing themselves” to another one who was called “clumsy” and “folds like a lawn chair”.

I knew how many times they had been overlooked or outright denied to be mentioned or promoted, especially by people paid to do exactly that.

And I thought that this accomplishment would be a defining moment in the next era of the FLATliners, fresh off the heels of almost losing everything during the COVID fiasco.

But I also feared what could happen next.

People would diminish it.

They would point out that it was third place in a year post COVID, where attendance numbers were down. 

They would compare times.

They would explain why it wasn’t as impressive as it looked.

And those who doubted and resented the girls standing on that podium, would pretend to be excited, supportive and unsurprised.

Because that’s what people do, especially when egos, jealousy, resentment and manipulation are involved.

To this day, and throughout all of the accomplishments of our team over the years, no one truly understand the importance of that day.

Most don’t understand that standing beside legends of the sport wasn’t the accomplishment.

The accomplishment was proving they belonged there.

For one brief moment, the entire world saw what I had been seeing for years.

And then it was over.

Ironically, the accomplishment itself would be followed by a decision that ultimately all but began our undoing and made me question if continuing a team made sense for the gym anymore, as far more influential people had been allowed to unknowingly begin planting the seeds of our demise utilizing some of the very people they did not respect as conduits to their revenge.

Because success doesn’t always strengthen relationships.

Sometimes it exposes cracks that were already there and risks made in desperation of the pursuit of conquering other teams instead of protecting the culture you’d built and the bigger picture I should have been pursuing.

The culture that had produced that accomplishment slowly became something different.

The wound wasn’t just losing athletes as a result of the situation, it was knowing that even our greatest accomplishment failed to prove to the greater community and those we had overcome on that day, that any of it mattered.

The wound was losing them to the very thing I had protected them against and cultivated them to defeat only to watch something I had poured years of my life into become unrecognizable.

Watching the thing I was most proud of slowly transform into a reminder of what had been lost every time I saw that jersey. The kind of torture no one quite understands, until you have no choice but to walk away.

Eventually, the team dissolved.

The gym closed.

The chapter ended.

And yet, when I think about FLATliners, that’s still the image that comes to mind.

Not the ending.

Not the disappointments.

Three women standing on a World Championship podium while many foolishly wondered how they got there.

I knew how they got there.

We all did.

And nobody can ever take that away.

Not the critics.

Not the sport.

Not time nor the gatekeepers who decide what and who is important.

Not even the people who eventually walked away or the ones who already did, undermining an accomplishment they themselves had not achieved.

For one moment, the truth was not spoken but displayed on stage for all to see. 

And it became both the pinnacle of our achievements and the beginning of our unfortunate demise.