A total of 53 teams showed up to participate in the 4th-annual Summer Slam on the waterfront event. Teams from Goldsboro, Raleigh, Rocky Mount and all over the state of North Carolina came out to participate Saturday afternoon, including those from Beaufort County.

Despite having to dodge the weather throughout midday, the show went on. The organizer of the event, Manny Vidal, said that he expected the rains and had already planned to be 30 minutes behind on the day. Luckily, the rains tapered off and the event was able to conclude without any more snags.

“Participants have been doing burpees on the (pull-up) bars, power-cleans, lunges, toe bar pull-ups, all sorts of stuff,” Vidal said.

Different divisions separated the teams. The bigger divisions received the most prize money if they reached the podium on Saturday afternoon.

Goldsboro participant Rachel Brun was glad for the rain and said she enjoyed her time at the event on Saturday.

“The rain held us up for maybe an hour, but it helped cool things down, so I didn’t mind it so much,” Brun said. “We’ve been preparing for this event as a gym for probably like two months, trying to get teams together and get everyone to come out. We just go in there and workout for fun so, it helped us have a purpose to go in and sweat and work hard every day.”

A lot of local participants were with BoCo Cross fit, a team formed from gym members at Fitness Unlimited in Washington. Sam Yates was one of those participants, as she also coaches at the gym.

“I think we started in 2016. We really had a great crowd, and in the summer you never really know what the weather is going to do but it held out for us. Everybody has come out with a really good attitude,” Yates said. “Numbers wise, I’m not 100% sure (how much it’s grown), but we’ve consistently had what we’ve wanted in order to hold it out here and not have too many or too little.”

Each team consisted of two participants. Another team from Fitness Unlimited and BoCo cross fit was the tandem of Alex Heck and Cody Godley. Heck and Godley trained for the event for about two months before Saturday’s event began.

“About four years ago BoCo cross fit came out here and decided that they wanted to put on kind of a community event,” Heck said. “Each year it’s grown. The first year they had it, I came out, then took two years off, but I’ve come back and one thing I will say is (Vidal) definitely made it more challenging. The competition is more challenging.”

Despite the rain, the 2019 Summer Slam was a success, according to Vidal and the rest of the staff that made the event happen. They look forward to holding another event next summer.