AAU TRACK AND FIELD 2018 INDOOR SEASON

2018 AAU Northern Indoor Track & Field National Championship
January 13-14, 2018
Rockford , IL
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2018 AAU 14U Youth Indoor Track & Field National Championship
March 3-4, 2018
Ypsilanti, MI
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2018 AAU Indoor Track & Field National Championships
March 9-11, 2018
Landover, MD
Event Information: Click Here or on the banner image
Event Merchandise: Click Here

POWERLIFTER DEFYING AGE, WINNING WORLD TITLES
originally posted at The Tennessean by Robert Holder

EVIERVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Fitness has always been a part of Ray Fougnier's life. The 74-year-old never knew just how far it would take him and that an off-the-cuff suggestion would lead to three world records.

Fougnier bested three of his previous class powerlifting records and was named Best Lifter in the 181-pound and below class at the AAU World Powerlifting, Weightlifting & Bodybuilding Championship last month in Las Vegas.

After setting records in April at the North America championship, Fougnier posted individual event world bests in the squat – 311 pounds – and deadlift – 430 pounds – to push his overall score in the powerlift competition to a world record of 926 pounds. In the third individual event – the bench press – he pushed 420 pounds.

Previous Coverage: Pigeon Forge powerlifter, 73, sets four world records at North American Championships

It is quite a feat for a man who started lifting competitively just four years ago on a whim. Fougnier, originally from New York, retired to Sevierville part time after teaching in the Empire State and Michigan.

The former teacher and school administrator was working out at the Pigeon Forge Community Center one day when an acquaintance suggested he lift in competitions.

"Most of life I tried to stay in shape," he said. "At times I got a little bit out and had to get back into it. I worked at it all my life, but I never did anything competitive."

Fougnier was just working out to stay in shape. After seeing his parents fight diabetes and cancer through their retirement years, he didn't want to become another statistic.

"I wanted to retire and I wanted to have a good retirement and stay healthy," Fougnier said.

He started "ramping up" working out but competing wasn't really on his list of to-dos. Then he saw the records for the state Amateur Athletic Union's lifting championships for his age bracket and knew he could make the list.

"I forgot about it for a while," Fougnier said. "Then I gave it a try."

He went to Maryville for the state event in 2013 and won sending him on a trip to nationals where he won again. He eventually made it to the world championships in South Africa that year. Four years later, he hasn't missed once since.

And this year he was named Best Lifter for all classes and ages 181 pounds and below on top of his three world records.

Fougnier said there's not really any set secrets to being healthy. It is all about committing to your health and the sooner the better.

EVENT CREDENTIALS AT A PARTNER PRICE

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HOUSING OPEN FOR THE 2018 AAU JUNIOR OLYMPIC GAMES

Housing is Now Open for the 2018 AAU Junior Olympic Games!
Greater Des Moines is excited and proud to host the 2018 AAU Junior Olympic Games.

Click here to make a reservation today and begin planning your trip

For additional information on Greater Des Moines, including affordable restaurants, family-friendly attractions and our long list of free things to do, visit catchdesmoines.com/aaujo.

See you in Des Moines!

STACKING HIS WAY TO THE TOP
Originally published as "The Family That Stacks Together" by Great Big Story on December 7, 2017

When Trey Griffith found his first set of stacking cups, his life was changed forever. He began training himself to rack and stack cups at lightning speed, competing in tournaments around the globe. Trey's father eventually took up stacking himself as an opportunity to bond and compete alongside his son. Today, at age 14, Trey is already the fastest stacker in the state of Texas. Now, he's ready to take on the world.

Trey Griffith has competed in sport stacking for the past (five) 5 years, earning numerous gold medals at the AAU Junior Olympic Games since 2013.

For more on sports stacking at the AAU Junior Olympic Games, visit aaujrogames.org.

AAU VOLLEYBALL HAPPENINGS

45th AAU Girls' Junior National Volleyball Championships
Registrations for 2018 Girls' Nationals is now open! Coming once again to Orlando, FL this gigantic event will take place from June 16-28, 2018.

Don't miss out on this opportunity at an extraordinary tournament and a shot at a National Championship! CLICK HERE for more details!

Honolulu Grand Prix!
Registration is now open for the 2nd annual AAU Honolulu Grand Prix! The tournament will take place over President's Day weekend on February 17-19, 2018.

More details about this event can be found HERE!

NCAA Final Four is set!
Penn St., Nebraska, Stanford, and Florida will battle it out for the championship title this weekend! 55 of the 68 athletes in the Final Four got their start as participants in the Amateur Athletic Union. Tune in Thursday the 14th and Saturday the 16th to cheer on your favorite team!

NATIONWIDE AND AAU RENEW A FIVE YEAR AGREEMENT!

NATALIE SISTON, Director

BRETT STEWART, Manager

At NATIONWIDE HEADQUARTERS in Columbus, Ohio proudly
showing the AAU LOGO to celebrate our Agreement Renewal.

NATIONWIDE is a supporting partner of AAU offering member
Benefits in Auto, Boat, Motor Cycle, RV and Pet Insurance.

JON BATISTE - PLAYING POINT GUARD ON MY AAU TEAM GAVE ME ENERGY & AN ALL AMERICAN DRIVE FOR SELF IMPROVEMENT
BY SORAYA NADIA MCDONALD

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Jon Batiste reached over to the Crosley record player in his dressing room at the Ed Sullivan Theater. He lifted the needle so that Stevie Wonder's In Square Circle could provide a little background music while he talked in the dim glow of what once was Carol Burnett's dressing room. Old-fashioned showbiz lights still frame the vanity's mirror, although the vanity itself is covered with books, hats, records and a speaker. A couple of paintings lean against the mirror.

The musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was quiet and relaxed, possibly the most subdued he'd been all day.

Batiste, 31, rarely stays still, which is the only way a person can hold down his Late Show gig while also acting as artistic director at the National Jazz Museum of Harlem, recording new music, promoting a Christmas album, reimagining "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," collaborating with Wynton Marsalis, writing op-eds for The New York Times and constructing a tribute to dancer Carmen de Lavallade for the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors. Batiste is arguably the country's most visible preservationist and celebrator of jazz. He and Stay Human, The Late Show's house band, reach roughly 3 million people each night through their televisions.

Jon Batiste's fingers glide across the keys of a Steinway & Sons piano in the Stay Human rehearsal space ahead of a live taping at The Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City.

The Late Show has recently vaulted to the top of the late-night ratings on the wings of host Stephen Colbert. Monday through Friday he provides a wry yet sunny accounting of how the world is descending into a morass of fear, uncertainty and, lately, how it's being pushed there by famous men who can't keep their hands to themselves. Batiste sets off the monologues with a tinkle of piano keys, a laugh or a quip. He's the amen corner for Colbert's sharpest jabs.

On the gray, overcast day after a terrorist plowed into a bike path in New York, killing eight people, Batiste strode into his eighth-floor office. When he crossed the threshold to find a stranger waiting for him, he held out his hand and let out one of his trademark "Yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaahs."

His buoyant, irrepressible happiness might seem inappropriate for the day after a tragedy, even for a man who comes from the land where people give you a parade when you die. (He grew up in Kenner, Louisiana, about 20 minutes from New Orleans, before moving to New York as a teen to attend The Juilliard School.) Nevertheless, he was humming, scatting and upbeat. Batiste considers transmitting that energy to be part of his job.

"It's an interesting line to thread, to find a joyous sound that also matches the tone of the material in the show," Batiste said. "That's the real challenge every day, is finding out, OK, how do we find that thing that's gonna push the energy that we want forward but not come across as insensitive or not come across as kitsch or out of taste? And that's what I enjoy. I love these artistic challenges."

He'd been listening to The Commodores on the way to work, and he sat down on the small gray couch in his office, barely able to contain his humming until I joined him in the chorus of "Lady (You Bring Me Up)."

Admittedly, it's hard not to bop your head once you hear the lively strings and driving beat of "Lady." The Commodores are part of a playlist that Batiste made for 2017. At the beginning of every year, he compiles a mix of songs, a sort of aural lookbook for the next 365 days. This year's mishmash included contemporary Bob Dylan, 1920s and '30s Louis Armstrong, Peggy Lee and Michael Jackson's Dangerous album.

The yearly mix provides a thematic foundation for what Batiste wants to reference in the show. About a week after we spoke, Batiste and Stay Human played an arrangement of "Lady" during a Late Show commercial break. It's evidence of the thoughtfulness that defines his tenure as Late Show bandleader.

"I like putting stuff into the machine and then seeing what comes out of the machine. The brain, that’s like our processing machine,
" Batiste said. "So for me, I like to just make a list of all the stuff that I want to digest and assimilate and then I just live with it."

Batiste has had years of experience putting music into his "processing machine." He began playing with his father, Michael, in the family's Batiste Brothers Band when he was about 6 or 7.

The Batistes are one of New Orleans’ most respected and legendary jazz clans, and they've often worked side by side with the Marsalis family. Both Batiste and his mentor, Wynton Marsalis, attended high school at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Wynton's father, pianist Ellis Marsalis Jr., headed the jazz department there and was succeeded by clarinetist Alvin Batiste, a distant cousin of Jon's.

"Him and Alvin and Clyde Kerr and Kidd Jordan, they were like the four village elders who taught everybody in New Orleans music from the last 40 years," Batiste said. His upbringing in a family of jazz musicians and his experiences playing point guard, both in school (where he was part of a state championship-winning squad) and for an AAU team, gave Batiste his energy, his musical acumen and his constant all-American drive for self-improvement.

"It's a discipline to achieve whatever your desired end result is," Batiste explained. "In sports, there's a score. There's statistics, and there's a winner and a loser and a championship, and there is one team that gets it. It's just very clear-cut.

"I think, in order to get better at being a musician and a bandleader and a composer and all these different things, you have to create things that are that clear-cut, because the competition that you're up against is yourself. So it's harder, if you're not willing to look into the mirror, to define what the end result is. It's very easy to get to a certain level and to just coast, and to not push yourself to be better, because nobody is really keeping score."

That constant pushing isn't just what Batiste expects of himself. He expects it of his bandmates in Stay Human too.

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