We are happy to announce our very first COUPLE Spotlight Athletes of the Month...Dave and Marie Hunter! Dave and Marie are the nicest two people you’ll ever meet. You can’t help but gravitate towards them because their smiles are contagious and their work ethic admirable. Married with two children, this hardworking couple balances family, work, friends, and gym life on the daily! Even though they don’t always get a chance to work out together, they are eachother's biggest supporters! It’s been awesome to see them crush their personal goals and we look forward to watching them create new ones!! Congratulations Dave and Marie!

So, this is wicked exciting, and we can’t even begin to say how surprised and honored we are to be recognized as athletes of the month, especially as a couple.

This is Us….

If you haven’t met us - you’ll find me (Marie) at 0530 and Dave at the 1730 class, which in itself kind of describes us to a tee. Polar opposites but we balance each other out- and are legit, each other’s best friends as well as partners in life.

Dave is from Syracuse, NY and I’m a bit of a nomad having grown up in a Military family, so I claim VA Beach as home. We met at the Naval Academy many moons ago, I graduated in 2001 and Dave in 2003 (yes I robbed the cradle and proud of it!) After graduating, I was commissioned as a Surface Warfare officer and moved here to Norfolk while Dave was still finishing college. Once Dave graduated, he joined me out here for about a year before I moved to Monterey, CA for Grad School and then he headed to Navy Nuclear Power School in South Carolina. We dated for 8 years with many deployments in between before we finally got hitched in 2008. In 2009, we welcomed our first kiddo, Isla, and then in 2011, Micah joined the Hunter crew! We adopted our Wheaten Terrier, Hazel, got a beta fish named sky and our little family was complete!

How did CrossFit come to be for us?

Marie: Well for me I needed a challenge and a change in pace. If I’m not at 0530 class, I’m teaching at Onelife on Thursday mornings. I teach a 1 hr. cardio class called BODYATTACK and before CrossFit I’d also take BODYPUMP Classes on a regular basis. One day Erin (also a Drop Box member and who I teach with) were talking after class about how we’d love to try out CrossFit, so I reached out to my awesome friend Lauren O’Neil, who I’ve known for over 15 years now, and she had me meet up and take a class with her at the box. I instantly fell in love- I couldn’t walk, but I was in love. I signed up for fundamentals right after that class and here I am, a year and a half later still loving it just as much if not more! That first class was so humbling, and let’s be honest, walking in as a total newbie and seeing members throwing weight up like it was nothing while I tried to not fall over like humpty dumpty using the training bar- insanely intimidating. Everyone was so supportive and encouraging though and I quickly realized that I found my home away from home and a group of friends that I couldn’t wait to see even if it meant getting up before the sun did! In the last year and a half, I’ve grown so much as a person and as an athlete. I’ve seen my body change, I’ve seen my confidence grow, I’ve embraced challenges that once scared me, and I can’t wait to reach goals that I have for myself (and there are many). Our two kiddos have seen us both at the box and have fallen in love with it as well and asked to be enrolled in a CrossFit Kids class. Isla has competed in 2 comps and Micah is now of age to compete so they will both be rocking their DBCF Gear at the Chesapeake Kids Classic in September! It’s become a way of life for not only Dave and I but also our kids and for that I’m so grateful. My only regret is not having taken the leap into CrossFit sooner. The community in general is amazing, and the family we have at Drop Box is one in a million!

Top left: Compete For A Cure ‘19 w/ Erin, Kilo CrushFest ‘19 w/ Jamie, DBCF: w/ Julie, Lisa, Kim, Jamie

Team Grit ‘19, bottom right pic: w/ Lauren, Cat, Kelly

Dave: As my lovely wife mentioned above, I graduated from the United States Naval Academy a few years behind her (she wasn’t lying about robbing the cradle!) I played lacrosse in college and pretty much my whole life. As adulthood set in and life got real, I hung up my stick and traded my teammates on the field for teammates in the home (after dragging my ass for eight years before finally popping the question, thank goodness Marie waited that long.) I got into running half marathons and weightlifting again, but it wasn’t the same as lax. I never considered CrossFit until Marie started her journey. It was awesome to see my wife evolve and become stronger, more confident and basically step out of her shell to do something unprecedented for her. She’d come home with cool stories about friends at the “box” and I could see how excited she would get about finishing a WOD. It was cool to see her in competitions, but honestly, I still didn’t understand what the difference was in what she was doing compared to me slinging iron in the garage with the music blaring… until I finally gave it a try.

When I finally signed up and participated in my first workout as an official Drop Box member, I admit I was skeptical. I had snatched before, I had power cleaned before (which I love now but hated in college), I was already pretty confident in my squatting abilities and was just coming off a 16 week 5x5 strong lifts program. How was CrossFit different? Why did people (my wife included) think it was worth paying for the use of similar equipment I already had access to in my garage or a Rec Center? Was there some intangible that I could not see until I had experienced it first hand? The short answer was YES! .

I was a little nervous the night before my first class, but I also couldn’t help being a little arrogant when Marie told me the workout (I’d later realize this to be foolish). The SWOD was three rounds of Max Rep Dumbbell Bench with 50 lb.dumbbells. I thought “I got this,” especially coming off a 5x5 strong lifts program and of course, “chest day is the best day!” Then the next WOD was a timed workout of ground to overhead with a 45 lb. plate until you reached 100 reps, as fast as you could. The kicker was the WOD also had an EMOM baked into it, where you performed five plate jump burpees every minute. Again, the night before I was like “you got this Dave, you love ground to overhead. I told myself all I had to do is knock out the GTOs fast, thus minimizing the burpees. Even so, it was only five burpees. Ha… little did I know. Long story short, at some point I stopped doing burpees and forced myself to finish the 100 GTOs. This is when I experienced my first CrossFit humbling moment, finished the WOD dead last and got to mark the WOD as complete, but not Rx. This is also when I officially became a CrossFitter and became intoxicated with the sport by realizing the benefits both physically and mentally.

I’ll officially be a Drop Box Member for one year come the end of June. I’ve made some great friends and have heard a ton of inspirational stories from the members that truly motivate me to be a better person. The coaches are awesome, and I’ve never felt anything other than welcomed since joining. I’ve grown to love lifting even more than before and have seen changes in both my wife and I that I would not have expected from our old asses at our ages. I’ve seen both of my kids inspired by a pretty kick ass and strong mother (aka my wife), which not every husband is lucky enough to see, and now they both participate in CrossFit. I know there are more deserving athletes at our gym, but I am honored to be selected as an athlete of the month with my wife. More importantly though, I am thankful for have the privilege of being part of an extraordinary gym family that always brings a smile to my day. It doesn’t matter how fast you are, what you look like, how much you can lift. There’s no judgement in the community. The love and support that is received from Drop Box’s Coaches and my fellow Athletes is unprecedented and it definitely fills that void of no longer being on a sports team. Thanks Drop Box, and thanks Marie for drawing me into something I’m going to appreciate the rest of my life!

Marie & Dave competed together as a couple for the Beauty & the Beast comp ‘19

Team Grit ‘19: 2 Vicious 2 Delicious- Dave, JC, James, Gil

‘18 Gangs of the Mid- Atlantic Comp w/ Mike, Melissa, Elizabeth, Kilo CrushFest ‘18 w/ Robert

🏋🏻‍♀️❤️🏋🏼‍♂️

June Spotlight Athletes of the Month- Dave & Marie Hunter!