After testing her skills in the CrossFit Games’ Elite Teen Throwdown and qualifying for the CrossFit Games as an individual competitor, Greenwich High School senior Brady Wallace is primed and poised for her next challenge.

And that challenge will begin very soon.

Wallace, a Greenwich resident, will compete in the Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge Semifinal, which takes place Friday to Sunday in Knoxville, Tenn. She will take part in the ultra-competitive event as part of the team titled CrossFit Red Zone, which is based out of Newtown, Conn. The four-member team includes Wallace, Maggie Heaton, PJ Cochrane and John Ashley, with Wallace being the team’s youngest member.

The CrossFit Red Zone team will compete against other teams in various workouts at the Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge Semifinal. Approximately 120 teams advanced to compete in the semifinals and only a limited amount of teams will advance to appear in the annual CrossFit Games. This marks the first year that Wallace is taking part in CrossFit events with a team. In the past, Wallace, who has been a CrossFit athlete for three years, competed individually.

“This year, I was so busy with school, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to compete as an individual,” Wallace said. “I decided to join a team and we are all very close and train together a lot. All of our goals is to enjoy being in an in-person competition. I think our goal is to enjoy the experience. It is a big jump in competition – there are a lot of professionals in the Team Division. With being so busy with school and preparing for college, I thought the team aspect would be something new and more fun.”

This is the first year that Wallace is participating in CrossFit events in the adult division. In 2020, she qualified for the prestigious CrossFit Games as a 17-year-old and would have competed against adults, but the CrossFit Games was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instead, Wallace competed in an in-person competition for teenagers – the Pit Fitness Ranch Elite Teen Throwdown 2020 in Three Rivers, Mich. Wallace placed an impressive seventh in her girls 16-17 year-old division, after 10 workouts were completed over a three-day span. She qualified for Wallace qualified for the 2020 CrossFit Games with a strong ninth-place finish out of 200 competitors in the world in her age-group division at a CrossFit qualifier in March. 

In order to qualify for the Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge, Brady and Team Redzone had to excel in an Open competition, which featured four workouts over three weekends. A handstand walk and double-unders (a form of jumping rope) were included in the workouts, which Team Redzone performed well in.

“It was exciting, it was a good experience for my first adult-ranked workout,” Wallace said. “It put me off on a good start.”

Next for Team Redzone was the CrossFit quarterfinals, which consisted of five team workouts over a four-day period. The team’s best workout for weight was the front squat competition. Coached by Kurt Kling, the team has trained five days a week, taking part in weight lifting, rowing, biking and running. In the past, Wallace has done workouts such as handstand walk, sandbag squats, sandbag carry, barbell snatch, clean and jerk and burpees during CrossFit competitions. Her strengths are in the weight lifting events.

Wallace, who will graduate from Greenwich High in June, will further her education at the University of Miami. Biology is one of her favorite subjects and he plans on pursuing a career in the medical field. She also intends to continue her CrossFit training while in college at Miami. She said being a CrossFit athlete has helped her maintain high grades in high school. While at Greenwich High, she has taken AP courses in calculus, statistics, literature and biology.

“Through my experience with CrossFit, I’ve learned to become disciplined and how to challenge myself,” she said. “This year has been my best academic year in high school. I believe sports has given me the skills I need to also succeed in school.”