Last Saturday in Houston, in the name of charity, 600 people filled an empty parking lot to face several minutes of increasingly intense pain while pumping out a series of box jumps, push presses, situps, lunges, pushups, kettlebell swings, squats, and burpees—repeated a total of 57 times.
Sponsored by the Houston law firm of Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels, Agosto & Friend, the Battle Buddy 57 CrossFit event raised more than $12,000 for research, education, and training as part of the Olivia Grace Stevens Endowed Fund in Neonatology at Texas Children’s Hospital.
The foundation was named in honor of Olivia Stevens, who was born with a rare genetic condition called a 13q chromosomal deletion, which can cause a varying range of developmental delays, birth defects, and mild to moderate learning problems. Olivia spent almost two months in the neonatal intensive care unit before going home for the first time. She is now five years old.
The Battle Buddy 57 consists of a series of eight exercises—to represent the eight weeks Olivia was in the NICU—repeated 57 times—to represent the number of days she was in the hospital. It started eight years ago as a small event with about 100 people. This year’s event was the second one sponsored by Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels, Agosto & Friend, and the second time Mo Aziz, a partner in the firm, participated in the CrossFit challenge.
For more information on Battle Buddy 57 and related events, go to its website or Facebook page. To read more about Olivia’s story, read her father’s post on the Texas Children’s Hospital blog.