This sports fest features brains, beauty, sweat & tears

By Yana Samberg
Correspondent

Squeeze into your bikini, oil your pecs, put on your thinking cap, get pumped, lace up your gloves and get ready to take your best shot. 

Hampton's third annual Sports Festival and Expo is back in town, packing a long list of sports both popular and obscure, offering chances to see or participate in arm wrestling, bikini body building, body building, boxing, chess, cornhole, CrossFit, fitness body building, Futsal indoor soccer, gymnastics, jiu-jitsu, K-1, kickboxing, mixed martial arts, Muay Thai, powerlifting (bench press and push-pull), strongest-man and -woman competitions and tae kwon do.

Thousands of sports fans are expected to converge on the Hampton Roads Convention Center this weekend for the festival and a free expo that features sports vendors and services, all sponsored by the Hampton Convention and Visitor Bureau.

"Every year, the event continues to grow," said Kris Smith, the visitor bureau's group sales manager. "The sports festival is helping to showcase our city as a dynamic sports scene to athletic planners from across the country."

Festival attendees can check out gymnastics, powerlifting and arm-wrestling demonstrations and competitions. There will be cornhole, chess and a variety of martial arts demonstrations and competitions. Medals will be awarded during all competitive events. Spectators also will have opportunities to try out sports for themselves, whether it is getting into the boxing ring, or trying to lift an oversized tire like a powerlifter.

The first year, about 1,100 athletes and 4,500 spectators participated; this year, festival organizers expect 2,500 athletes and more than 10,000 spectators. More than half of the participating athletes are from the Hampton Roads area, but the festival also draws participants from other states and Canada.

"One of the things we have attempted to do is to bring in sports that not everyone knows about. Most people have heard of boxing, but they may not have heard of Muay Thai. So the boxing fan can come to the festival to see boxing, but as they walk around they will get to see all kinds of other sports going on that may pique their interest," said Craig Lenniger, sports events logistics coordinator for the festival.

"And I can't tell you how many dads I met who were there to watch their daughter compete in gymnastics, but were super-excited they could watch boxing or CrossFit when their child wasn't competing. That is the goal, to give the entire family a chance to watch a sport they love without having to buy multiple tickets to multiple events."

And yes, Lenniger says, cornhole really is a sport.

"There is actually a professional circuit that travels the country, and we will have a few of those athletes at the event."

MATCHING WITS

Oladapo Adu likes chess because of the life lessons it teaches.

"There is a link between chess and life," said Adu, an internationally ranked chess master. "There is a link between how discipline learnt on the chessboard also applies to life, such as patience, perseverance."

Adu will demonstrate the fundamentals of the game while attempting to play 30 players simultaneously during the third annual Hampton Sports Festival this weekend.

Although playing 30 people is different from being able to focus on a single opponent, Adu wants to show that chess is "a game for all ages; it is not restricted to any age. What matters most is what the individual knows, whether you are a 5-year-old girl... or a 50-year-old individual."

According to the World Chess Federation, known as FIDE, chess originated in India in the 6th century. Today, chess is considered an elite mental sport that has been the stuff of movies ("Searching for Bobby Fischer") to musicals ("Chess") to random '80s pop songs ("One Night in Bangkok").

Adu started playing as a child in Nigeria, after watching his brother play with friends.

"Watching my older brother playing chess with his friends got me started, and the curiosity of how the pieces look, and how they function," Adu said.

He became the Nigerian national champion in 1995; now, he lives in Maryland and is a professional chess coach as well as an accomplished player. Adu is rated as an international master by FIDE, which means he is in the top .25 percent of all tournament players.

At 6:30 p.m. Friday, Adu will start playing 30 members of the general public who have pre-registered to play against him. A simultaneous chess exhibition is one where a single player competes against many opponents, moving from board to board. When the single player arrives at each board, the challengers make their move. Adu will then make his move and move to the next board.

Adu played a similar simulation at last year's festival.

He said his strategy in a situation like this to "play the board, not the individual."

PULLING HER WEIGHT

Concetta Denisi grabs hold of the circus dumbbell with both hands, brings it up to her midsection and -with a grimace and a jerk - single-arm raises the weight above her head and tries to hold it there.

Despite the cute-sounding name, the dumbbell Denisi is trying to heft weighs 140 pounds. The movement is part of the 28-year-old's training regimen as she prepares for her first strongman competition, one of the events at the third annual Hampton Sports Festival.

Denisi, originally from New York, serves in the Navy.

A runner and all-around athlete, Denisi sort of fell into the sport of powerlifting.

"I came to the gym to do cross-training lifting," she said. "I got invited to try an Atlas stone lift." And the rest, as they say, is history. And, for the record, Atlas stones are exactly what they sound like - big, gray, heavy spheres of increasing weight and size used during competitions. (If you go to the festival, you can see them for yourself.)

Denisi became part of a group of powerlifters at Brute Strength Gym in Norfolk, where she trains. She became intrigued with powerlifting because "it's an unconventional sport." The discipline, technique and equipment are different. The circus dumbbell, for example, is "not your average dumbbell," as Denisi puts it.

Indeed, this dumbbell looks like something that fell out of the underside of a car. The ends are hollowed out and can have weights added to the dumbbell to increase lifting difficulty.

Matt Blankenship, Denisi's training partner, also will be competing at the festival. The 27-year-old started competing in strongman events three years ago, after his cousin introduced him to the sport. Blankenship calls powerlifting "the best competition. It's about seeing the most competitive lifts."

Stella Krupinski, who manages the gym and is helping Denisi and Blankenship train, said people are drawn to powerlifting because it's a sport they've not seen before. Krupinski, herself a bodybuilding and powerlifting champion, said if people come to the festival, they can see the various equipment powerlifters use, from Atlas stones and circus dumbbells to 700-pound tires. "We'll have all the equipment there, and people can try it out for themselves," Krupinski said.

All three athletes are quick to distinguish between bodybuilding (oil, glitzy bikinis, etc.) and powerlifting. In bodybuilding, it's not just about achieving physical prowess, but displaying a certain aesthetic. And all the heavy lifting is generally done before competition. Powerlifting, by comparison, is all about the lifting, technique and form.

Denisi says lifting helps her "be a well-rounded athlete."

"Once you try it and do it," Denisi said, "you feel really strong."

Yana Samberg, ygs1971@gmail.com