CLASS NOTES APPLAUSE FOR ALUMNI
Balance beams to barbells old injury. I’m pushing my limits, which you do in any sport.” It’s clear that pushing her limits has paid off. In February, she broke a Guinness World Record for most weight lifted in one minute overhead squat (female). The next day, she won the Michelob ULTRA pull-up challenge with 39 pull-ups in 95 seconds—a performance that earned her an all-expense paid VIP trip to the Super Bowl. Alongside coach and now husband Ben Benson, Bridgers has competed in the South East Regional Competition for the past five years, where she rustic white photography placed in the top 10 every year. Bridgers placed Emily Bridgers broke a Guinness World Record for most weight lifted sixth in the 2014 CrossFit in one minute of overhead squats by a woman (4,140 pounds). Games—her best finish to date—and, in January, fter a back injury ended her placed first with her team at Wodapalooza, gymnastics career, Emily Bridgers a four-day fitness competition held in BSEd ’09 assumed her competition Miami, Florida. days were over. Bridgers attributes much of her success in Doctors believed she would never run CrossFit to her gymnastics background. again, much less lift weights. Eleven years “You have to be willing to push yourself later, the former Gymdog is back in the gym, almost every day to an uncomfortable level if defying the odds and competing at the highest you want to do well,” she says. “There’s somelevel in a different sport: CrossFit. thing behind the sport of gymnastics that Bridgers was first introduced to the con- made me mentally tough from a young age.” ditioning program in 2010, when she and When she isn’t training, Bridgers and her former teammate Kelsey Ericksen Pohlmann husband coach clients at CrossFit TermiBSA ’07, DVM ’12 played around with various nus, the gym they own in Atlanta. Bridgers workouts in the UGA weight room. She found plans to compete in at least one or two more that CrossFit not only strengthened her back CrossFit Games seasons before going into but added that competitive aspect back into retirement, but her goals have shifted. her life. “Over time I’ve realized that your focus “I can’t say that my back has been pain free just has to be on getting better and doing the whole time, but it’s significantly stron- whatever you can to continue to progress,” ger, significantly healthier,” she says. “Any she says. “I just want to stay healthy and be a flare-ups I have aren’t even relative to my good example to other people.”
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and volunteer coordinator for the Georgia Tech Alumni Association.
gradnotes agricultural & environmental sciences Philip Szmedra MS ’81, PhD ’86 of Americus was named the Jane and Larry Comer Faculty Scholar in the School of Business Administration at Georgia Southwestern State University. Szmedra is a professor of economics at GSW. Jennifer M. Cruse-Sanders MS ’97, PhD ’03 was named director of UGA’s State Botanical Garden of Georgia in February.
arts & sciences Armando A. de la Cruz PhD ’65 of Starkville, Mississippi, penned Son of the Orient Seas (Dorrance Publishing Co., 2016), an autobiography that provides a history of the Philippines during its occupation by the Japanese in World War II. Jann Haynes Gilmore MA ’71, PhD ’75 of Alexandria, Virginia, is the author of Olive Rush: Finding Her Place in the Santa Fe Art Colony (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2016), a biography of the artist, Native American art educator, and social reformer. Dan Moore MA ’72 of McLean, Virginia, wrote Promise Lost: Stephen Joyner, the Marine Corps and the Vietnam War (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016). The biography tells the story of the late Stephen Joyner, a Marine officer and former All-American football player. Dean Hartley PhD ’73 of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, penned