Like almost everywhere in the world, COVID-19 brought most sports and fitness programs to a quick halt at Dalat International School in Tanjung Bungahat, Malaysia.
This wasn’t acceptable for Brian Brewster, a long-time CrossFit enthusiast from America who has lived and worked in Malaysia for 17 years.
So in 2021, Brewster, who teaches one class at the school, had the idea to start a CrossFit program.
- “Malaysian lockdown was really long and severe,” Brewster told Morning Chalk Up in an interview. “The school rules were super strict. They just dragged on and on and on, and it killed so many of our other sports programs…The one sport we thought we could do was to be outside doing CrossFit.”
Brewster successfully pitched the program to the school’s administration. It began small, located in an outdoor patio space off an old cafeteria. Then, when the pandemic restrictions were lifted, they moved inside after refitting the old weight room into a CrossFit gym.
Where They Are Today
Dalat International School boasts 750 students from 25 different countries, has four Level 1 or Level 2 CrossFit coaches, and offers CrossFit as a fitness class and as an after-school club.
- The school also offers morning CrossFit classes for all staff, including teachers, janitors, and kitchen workers. And on Thursdays, they offer a ladies-only class.
- Most of the after-school classes, though, are a mix of students and staff.
- Further, many of the school’s sports teams, including volleyball, basketball, and soccer, also join classes when it fits their season’s schedule. Brewster said that students who compete in the CrossFit Open receive varsity sports recognition.
“My vision for it has always been a community space that connects the staff with the kids,” Brewster said. “There are very few things that bond you together and create a culture that’s supportive as effectively as suffering together.”
The Big Picture
COVID came with so many negatives, so for Brewster, the rise of the CrossFit program has to be considered “one real positive thing that came out of it.”
And he hopes this is only the beginning.
- “I feel like we’re doing a little bit of what Apple did back in the ‘80s…They spent some big money bringing computers into schools and sort of got people used to the Apple platform, and people stayed with it,” he said. “So I do think we’re laying the foundation here to have a whole gamut of people that are interested in staying fit.”
The proof is in the pudding: Brewster said many of the American students find a local CrossFit gym to train during the summer months when they’re in the United States on summer vacation.
- “They’re not intimidated to go to a gym back in the United States, and I don’t think most high school kids feel comfortable doing that,” Brewster said.
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Featured image: Dalat International School
