Kellogg High School grad seeks CrossFit glory

If you attended Kellogg High School in the mid-’90s, you may remember Laura McCargish, a cheerleader and successful cross country and track runner.

You may also remember her as the girl who fell out of the second story window of the KHS building onto the roof of the library and had to get a skin graft to fix a serious cut on her calf.

All local athletics aside and potential tragedy be damned though, because now Laura (no longer McCargish) Nielsen is working on something far more memorable.

The 40-year-old has her sights on the Reebok CrossFit Games beginning on Aug. 1 in Madison, Wis.

CrossFit is a high-intensity fitness program incorporating elements from several sports and types of exercise.

Nielsen, now living in Yorktown, Va., worked her way through her regional competition and has seemingly improved at every level she competes at.

In Nielsen’s regional competition, she finished 51st out of 11,000 athletes. Then in a worldwide competition, Nielsen jumped up to 15th for her age group (age 40-44) from a pool of just under 20,000 women.

Her performance in the worldwide competition is what got her invited to the CrossFit Masters online qualifying round.

“I was invited to compete against the top 200 athletes in a Masters online qualifier. We had four workouts announced that we had to video tape and have judged by an affiliate in good standing,” Nielsen said. “We had five days to do the workouts and enter our scores into the worldwide leaderboard.”

Only the top 20 finishers from the CrossFit Masters would make it to the CrossFit Games. Nielsen finished 11th.

Now as Nielsen waits and trains for the CrossFit Games, she now reminisces on her journey to where she is right now.

Getting into CrossFit really came out of boredom for Nielsen. She had been doing other workouts and simply got tired of doing them, but then some encouragement from a close friend pushed her in the right direction.

“One of my best friends, who happens to be my boss, talked me into trying CrossFit,” Nielsen said. “Tami Elliot Harrison owns World Class Gymnastics in Newport News, Va. I have worked for her for 13 years, coaching recreational and competitive team gymnastics. We started going to CrossFit Oyster Point in Newport News together. I fell in love with it instantly.”

Through experienced coaching and desire to be as good as she can be, Nielsen has risen to dizzying heights during her time as a CrossFitter.

“My main coach’s name is Nathan Bramblett, and he had just made the 2015 Reebok CrossFit Games when I started training there,” she said. “I loved being coached by a CrossFit Games athlete and learning from him was so exciting. CFOP has a ton of great coaches and a ton of stellar athletes and I wanted to be known as one of them. I loved looking at the leaderboard for the day and seeing where I was, and it was fun to try to work my way to the top some days, and to watch myself improve on workouts, or lifts. It was so awesome just to see myself get better. I stopped worrying about what my body looked like and started being more concerned about what my body could do.”

Almost three years later, Nielsen is about to make her first appearance at the Reebok CrossFit Games. She is hoping that some of her Wildcat family in Kellogg is still supporting her, even if she can’t get over here for her annual summer trek home.

“I am extremely proud to represent Kellogg,” Nielsen said. “I come home every summer to visit my family in Idaho. Kellogg will always be my home. My kids have both been coming home with me every summer since they were born. They love it as much as I do. We are so bummed we can’t make the trip this year. But I have to make my trip to Madison worth missing my trip home, so I’m definitely trying to get on that podium.”

It seems that there is going to be plenty of Wildcat Pride in Madison next week.