After surviving the arduous initial three weeks of The Open portion of the worldwide event, two Grand Canyon University CrossFit members wound up the squad's 2023-24 season with powerful finishes in the quarterfinals of the 2024 CrossFit Games. Out of nearly 15,000 women across the globe to compete in the advanced round, Lopes' Student Leader Maddy Hinman finished No. 1751 in the world while Lopes' sophomore Ava Jeziorski landed at No. 12,212.
 
While neither ladies' finish qualified them for the semifinals, Hinman's performance was an emphatic exclamation point on a banner Lopes' career. The now-graduated Lopes' senior finished off four years of helping mold and shape the program by finishing among the top 400 female athletes from the West Coast competing in the event. Of the four workout rounds she completed at the CrossFit Barbell Saves Project in west Phoenix, her last two qualified among the top 500 participants. Hinman's third workout was her best, placing 370^th with her five rounds of 10 chest-to-wall handstand pushups and five ring muscle-ups.
 

 
"I was really pushing to qualify for semifinals this year to at least make it into the top 500 in the west, so I definitely wanted to do my best," said Hinman. "As a coach, it was great to see the progress that Ava (as well as the rest of the team) has made. Ava has gotten much stronger over this past year and, overall, just seems more confident in her abilities, so that was really cool to see!"
 















For Jeziorski, who recently celebrated her 19^th birthday, the event was a foreshadowing for future greatness as she put the capper on her first full season with the Lopes. Competing back home at a CrossFit gym in Illinois, Jeziorskj only got better as the four rounds of the quarterfinal progressed, finishing with a final workout of 26 clean-and-jerks that placed among the top 4000 in the competition.
 

"Both Ava and I would've obviously loved to move on to the semis, but we learned a lot," said Hinman. "The program as a whole is moving in the right direction, and this year really showed that we have some great athletes coming up through the program these next few years."