From the Outgoing Nantan, Cookie
YHC is honored and humbled to have served as F3 Alpha Nantan the past 2 years. When Ha-Ha passed the torch to me in May 2020, I knew I had big shoes to fill. Despite the challenges early on with Covid, we pressed forward as a Region and saw lots of growth and acceleration during this time.
We built an Alpha Shared Leadership Team of 12 high impact men who met monthly to push things forward. We launched several new AO’s, welcomed dozens of FNG’s and also helped launch Gwinnett into its own Region. F3 Alpha held consistent 2nd F gatherings and 3rd F community events including quarterly blood drives and weekly workouts with the men of No Longer Bound. We solidified two Region-wide annual events including the Darth Visor Memorial CSAUP in August and the Santa Ruck in December.
Most recently, we reorganized our Alpha super region into smaller sub-regions due to us being very spaced out. This will help us leverage proximity to improve fellowship and better serve our PAX. YHC feels like we accomplished a lot, but there is still a lot of work to be done to reach more sad clowns in our community.
Moving forward, I have asked Anthony Walsh, aka Speedo, to take over as Nantan. Some of you have gotten to know him well the past few years. Before taking on this role, he served as Site Q for the Widowmaker and sub-region Q for Johns Creek. He is a servant leader who is ready to take our Region to the next level. Fun fact… he and I actually share a birthday, Feb 11th. In order for you all to get to know him better, below is a PAX Spotlight featuring our new Nantan.
Before I go, I want to say thank you to all of the Alpha leaders who make things happen behind the scenes without recognition. None of the acceleration would be possible without your contributions.
Always an honor to lead.-Cookie
Incoming Nantan Spotlight
Hospital Name: Anthony Walsh
Age: 56
F3 Name: Speedo
Family: I’ve been married to my bride Pamela for almost 29 years. We have three sons who are 25, 22 and 19. Only one son has been to F3 (Clog, my middle one) but working on the others.
Home AO, other active AO’s: I started beat downs at the Gladiator and rucking with Backpack Infantry. I added the Widowmaker at some point and now the Boneyard. I love to travel to area AOs so I’ve spent time at The Hooch, The Bridge and traveled to Roswell for Bad Apple and Rubicon in Alpha Central.
How long have you been in F3: ~2 ½ years
Who EH’d you? Spandex was the first to approach me and invite me to ruck.
F3 Name Origin: I was doing a weight loss challenge with my brother in 2019 and was swimming pretty regularly. The Backpack Infantry guys (Spandex and Kegger along with some covid casualties) would show up at the pool parking lot and eventually invited me to join them. We rucked on Labor Day 2019 and I was given the name Speedo despite being a below average swimmer and never owning (or desiring to own) a Speedo.
What does F3 mean to you & has it changed over time? I had heard of F3 before I was EH’d. Fannie Mae told me about it so I looked it up online. It seemed like a new age kind of group based on the terminology they used so I was skeptical. My first beat down was led by Mufasa and I still have some mental scars from that one. I couldn’t believe what he had us do and I was sore for a week. I slowly added a second beat down each week along with rucking and found myself getting stronger. More importantly, I started to develop some great friendships and ran into guys at the neighborhood pool, the park, etc. The 2nd F events plus meeting other PAX at other AOs was very life-giving to me and I just got hooked. I also recently changed churches, due in part to an F3 relationship.
What are your Fitness Goals? My everyday goal is to stay healthy and not get hurt. For 2022, my fitness goals are to complete 200+ pushups per day (with Zohan’s encouragement and partnership) and workout 300 times (including 200+ beat downs plus rucks, swims, walks, etc.). I hit 300 in 2020 and just missed it in 2021.
What would you like to see F3 Alpha accomplish in the next year? With the recent move to a subregion model in Alpha, I think it’s important to encourage cohesion within each subregion and at the same time keep Alpha thriving and growing. Things like CSAUPs, convergences, challenges and region-wide activities (e.g. Santa Ruck) are great examples of region-level activities that help bring energy to the region while allowing our subregions to thrive as they do more close-to-home stuff.
I’d also like to encourage more of a focus on recruiting FNGs and looking up guys who have not posted in a while (No Man Left Behind). I know some AOs have been really good at this so finding out their secret sauce and sharing it within the region will be awesome. FNGs are at the core of our ‘growth by division’ strategy. I know food talks so perhaps a little competition with an edible reward for the AO with the most FNGs in a year might be in the works.
Additional Comments: As I was asked to consider taking this role of Nan‘tan I thought of the men who have filled that role since I started F3 (Ha-Ha and Cookie) and others before them who paved the way to where we are today. It’s humbling for sure since I look up to these men in so many ways. I want to thank Cookie for all his leadership throughout an unprecedented time over the last two years. Your confident yet humble leadership style is worth emulating. And I want to thank every man in F3. You all set and maintain the standard for this organization that will help sad clowns who we may not even know yet get to experience F3.