What Would a Combined California/West Regional Have Looked Like in 2017?

With the news that the California and West Regionals will be combined for the 2018 CrossFit Games season, we wanted to take a look at what that might have looked like in 2017. While we don’t have all the details, we do know that 10 men and women qualified for the CrossFit Games this year, but next year only five will be advancing.

So we have started with the Open and looked at who would qualify for a combined regional and then compared regional scores to see who would have likely qualified this past May/June. We are taking a bit of a guess as what 2018 will look like, but we have made a few assumptions for our analysis.

• The Northern and Southern California regions will be combined into one region (the California region) for the Open. The Canada West and North West regions will also be combined. Both combined region will send 20 athletes to the new Regional.
• In our analysis, combining the California regions is easy because of the ability to sort by state on the Games leaderboard. For the Canada West and North West, we just took the top 10 from each region to keep it simple.

Combined California Region (Women)

When combining the NorCal and SoCal regions from the 2017 CrossFit Open, there are actually not many surprises. Most of the top athletes placed well within the top 20 of the combined leaderboard, but there was one notable exception. Val Voboril would have finished 32nd in a California region during the Open and would not have advanced to Regionals.

Voboril finished 32nd in the state of California in the Open. There were a lot of athletes who elected to go team which meant that 30th place (Briana Gaipa) would have received the final invitation.

Other than Voboril, all of the top 10 at the California Regional would have qualified in a combined California region during the Open.

Combined California Region (Men)

On the men’s side, all of those who qualified for the Games were safely in the top 20 in California. There were a few notable names who would have had to wait for athletes ahead of them to go team. Those were Ben Alderman, Dusty Sulon and Kyle Kleinschmidt. Unfortunately, not enough elected to go team for them to get the second round of invitations.

Combined North West & Canada Region (Men & Women)

By taking the top 10 in each region from the Open, only one athlete who would not qualify stands out – Casey Campbell. Campbell finished 18th in the North West region during the Open, but would end up taking 5th in the West Regional.

In the men’s field, George Sanchez finished 14th and Cody Anderson took 21st in the North West region during the Open. Thus, we are assuming that both would not have qualified in a combined regional format.

Regionals (Women)

The 10 women who qualified for the 2017 CrossFit Games were:

California: Cho, Pedri, Pichelli, Voboril, Fisher
West: Mathews, Huckaby, Abbott, Fuhrer, Campbell

Voboril and Campbell would not have qualified for the combined regional so they are out. Cho, Pedri and Pichelli had times at regionals to finish 1st, 2nd and 4th, respectably, in a combined regional. Mathews and Huckaby would take 3rd and 5th, respectably, based on their regional times.

Athletes on the wrong side of the cut line would have been Lauren Fisher (6th), Emily Abbott (7th) and Carly Fuhrer (11th).

Regionals (Men)

The 10 men who qualified for the 2017 CrossFit Games were:

California: Bridges, Fisher, Carroll, Patzer, Rethwill (and Alcaraz)
West: Fikowski, Kwant, Cody Anderson, Sager, Sanchez

George Sanchez and Cody Anderson would have not qualified for regionals based on their Open performances. Surprisingly, only one athlete from California would have qualified with their times at regionals – Josh Bridges. Bridges would have taken 2nd in a combined regional.

The other four qualifiers would come from the West Regional. Brent Fikowski (1st), Samuel Kwant (2nd) and Cole Sager (4th) would all qualify. The remaining spot would actually come from an athlete who did not qualify for the Games. Mitchel Stevenson finished 6th, right behind Sanchez, at the West Regional. Anderson and Sanchez’s absence allowed Stevenson to edge ahead into the final qualifying spot.

Garret Fisher, Jason Carroll, Julian Alcaraz, Jeff Patzer and Wes Rethwill all would have failed to qualify.