MORGANTOWN — Sometimes a little friendly competition and some extra motivation is all that is needed to make a meaningful impact.
Recently, Crossfit Morgantown gym raised more than $18,000 for “Barbells for Boobs,” a charity that raises awareness for breast cancer and helps women and men under the age of 40 to get breast cancer screenings that can’t afford it.
“Every year, gyms from all around the world participate in ‘Barbells for Boobs’ organization, which essentially, we partner with ‘Barbells for Boobs’ and it is crowdsourced fundraising, where we take our members, our friends and we have them donate to the cause,” said Jeff Giosi, owner of Crossfit Morgantown.
The fundraiser started in October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and ran all the way until Dec. 31.
According to Giosi, the money that his gym raised will go directly towards helping 228 people get the breast cancer screenings that they need. Also, of all the gyms worldwide that participated in “Barbells for Boobs,” Crossfit Morgantown ranked tenth in total money raised.
For the past few years, Crossfit Morgantown has been locked in an interstate fundraising rivalry with Crossfit Coal, a gym near Beckley, W.Va.
“There were some interesting text messages and Facebook messages between (Crossfit Coal owner) Chip (Williams) and I, with maybe a little friendly trash talking going back-and-forth,” Giosi said. “I knew that he was going to come in big in December, and he believed that I was going to come in big in December.”
In recent years, Crossfit Coal has held the “Barbells for Boobs” fundraising title for the state, and looked poised to repeat again this year, until a late surge from Crossfit Morgantown on the final day of the fundraiser stole the state title away.
“The last day of the fundraiser, we were at about $13,000,” Giosi said. “We did $5,300 that day just from our members getting excited about the cause.”
“Really what we talked about, which was awesome, is the spirit of everything we’re trying to do here, our little friendly rivalry, all it was doing was impacting more lives. Our back-and-forth, all we were doing was fighting to see who could impact more people.”
Joe Bartolo, a member of Crossfit Morgantown, never anticipated what a resounding success it would turn out to be. He credits Giosi’s motivation and enthusiasm for pushing the gym’s members to raise more and to donate more.
“This year, (Giosi) challenged us to be the state champions,” Bartolo said. “He said he’d never been a state champion in anything, and together we could all be state champions. It all came down to Dec. 31, New Year’s Eve. It was neck-and-neck all night long, and with Jeff’s motivation and with all of our members we dug deep and continued to dig deep.”
“Barbells for Boobs” was founded by Zionna Hanson in California in 2009 after her best friend Cecy Morales was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 26.
Morales was initially denied from being able to use her insurance to get screened because of her age, so Hanson decided to use her passion for fitness to help her friend. Hanson and 60 of her closest friends and supporters raised more than $4000 in a small parking lot in Morales’ honor, and thus “Barbells for Boobs” was born.
