Maine Games/New Balance Male and Female Athletes of the Year named
- Posted 4 months ago|
- 0 comments
MAINE GAMES/NEW BALANCE MALE AND FEMALE ATHLETES OF YEAR NAMED
SACO -The Maine Games has named it's 2008 New Balance Male and Female Athletes of the Year.
For the second straight year the Maine Games/New Balance Female Athlete of the Year comes from the tennis courts at Colby College, where the competition was held at the end of June.
Winslow High School senior, Mindy Fowler, who won the gold medal in the Women's Open division in the morning competition, and then teamed up with her father, Jeff, a tennis coach in Central Maine, to win the gold medal in the Mixed Double's championship, has been tabbed for this honor. In addition to her prowess on the tennis court, the following weekend, Mindy competed in the Maine Games high school field hockey competition for Winslow High as well. This Maine Games two-sport athlete may have competed in a third sport, had high school girl's ice hockey been available, as she competes at the varsity level in all three.
As proficient as Mindy may be on the court and on the field, she's even more adept in the classroom where she is currently ranked in the top ten in her class, and was a National Honors Award winner as a junior. This school year she's signed on to take four advanced placement classes as well.
In 2008, Mindy was the #1 tennis player on the Winslow team, finishing with an 8-4 record.
On the other side of the Athlete of the Year coin is the 2008 Maine Games State Powerlifting Male Lifter of the Meet (Open Division); gold medalist, Chris Page, 42, of Hermon.
Chris is a three-time Maine Games gold medalist in powerlifting in the Open division, and has also won the same number of gold medals in the Sub-open category. In 2005, in the first-ever Maine Games powerlifting event, Chris established meet records that he has broken every year since, getting stronger with each competition.
In November of 2006, Chris suffered a work-related accident, when a reel of wire rolled off his Central Maine Power truck, and crushed his hand and severed his left thumb completely. "I thought I'd never lift again." After wrapping up his hand and his severed thumb in the only thing available-an oily rag-his co-workers transported him to the hospital where he was met at the front door. The hospital personnel wheeled him straight into the operating room, where the surgery to attempt to re-attach his mangled thumb took nearly four hours. "They told me to come back in six days to see if the surgery took," said Chris. "I didn't think I'd ever be able to compete again in powerlifting." After the sixth day, however, doctors thought he might be able to keep his thumb, despite never being able to use it again. But in March of 2007, barely four months after his accident, he finished second in his weight class, missing out on a gold medal by only 22 pounds total, over three lifts. His arch-rival (and good friend), Travis Adams, of Bangor, took gold for the first time in the event, and was named Male Lifter of the Meet (Open division).
In 2008, Chris had a three lift total of 1,767 pounds (squat; 705 pounds, bench press; 440 pounds, dead lift 622 pounds). While training for the 2008 Maine Games State Powerlifting Championships, he lost 17 pounds, to drop down to the 198 pound weight class.
In 2006, just two days before his accident, Chris set a national record in the AAU Masters Lifetime competition with an effort of 606 pounds in the squat. This amount was exactly three times his body weight.
No longer able to work as a lineman for Central Maine Power, Chris has taken a less strenuous position and now works for CMP as an educator in the classroom, teaching 5th and 6th graders about safety and electricity in schools in Northern Maine. He also works with local fire departments, and other public and private concerns, teaching crane operators, and anyone else who needs to work around power lines.
A former high school baseball player at Brewer High, he now focuses on powerlifting, both competing and recently as a coach to a Paralympic athlete, Craig Popper. Popper, who competes in bench-press only divisions, has developed the same tenacity that Chris has exhibited for the past 10 years. So much of that had rubbed off on Popper, that when Chris was expressing doubts about his ability to lift again following his accident, it was Popper who convinced him that his injury was nothing. "It's only your thumb," Popper would tell him. "I don't have any legs. I can still lift."
That was the kind of inspiration he had passed down to his pupil, and now he was getting it right back.
This award has been sponsored since 2003, by New Balance. New Balance has manufacturing facilities in Skowhegan, as well as Norridgewock and Norway, Maine.
Both athletes have been nominated by the Maine Games for the National Congress of State Games Athletes of the Year. If either one is chosen for this prestigious award, they will be invited to the 2008 NCSG Annual Symposium, held this year in Rochester, New York, in September, for a banquet in their honor.