Courage award-Runner Up
By Eric Todd
Joe Garcia-Courage Award runner-up
The courage award description reads as follows:
This goes to an individual who shows the courage to overcome an obstacle in order to return to competition. This may be a comeback from an injury, or just having to deal with difficult personal issues but still shows the courage to compete in the USAWA.
As was already announced, first place in this category went to Dean Ross. I was able to get the runner-up award delivered last weekend at Clark’s Birthday Bash, and it went to Joe Garcia of Clark’s Gym. Joe is a Hall of Famer from the class of 1997. He can boast by far the best Hand and Thigh lift in the history of the IAWA and the USAWA. It was the fighting spirit by which he worked toward these two accolades that allowed him to successfully conquer one of his biggest challenges to date. This past year saw him battle what seemingly could have been a deadly bout of Covid. It was so bad, that he had to be hospitalized and put on a ventilator, which is often a death sentence in these kinds of cases. It wasn’t to be in Joe’s case, though. He got off the ventilator, out of the hospital, and got back to work. Last time I saw, he was up to completing somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 pushups. It is clearly a rough thing to have endured but does make him more than worthy of this award. Way to go, Joe. Glad you are still kicking, and congrats on the award!