Players recall Holt trying to loosen them up if they were playing tight in certain games. She was demanding, but also, if you did well, she could make it fun.” I connected.”ĭoolittle came from Canada and had never had the rigorous practices and training that was part of the Holt program. “With her being so competitive and intense, there were some personality conflicts – you can either connect or clash – but it worked for me. “She was very organized and we always knew what we were doing,” Safranski said of Holt’s practices. She left then to join her husband at Idaho, and the two have lived the coaches’ vagabond lives ever since. Her 1994 team registered a Zags-best 21-10 record and earned a WNIT appearance. Holt had been head coach at Nevada-Reno (at age 24) and Pacific before GU. “She wore those high heels and she could stomp those suckers into the floor like they were made of steel, and really let the refs hear some choice words.” “She could light you up,” Christensen said of Holt’s occasional outbursts, on the practice floor and in games. “What do I remember about Julie? First and foremost, her fiery personality … she is a very, very intense person.” – Ivy Safranski, former player. I love it, and I’m 66 and still able to do it – and do it well.” Julie Holt is pictured while head coach of Idaho. you, and you better leave your ego at the door because you’re going to get your teeth knocked out at some point. “Most of the people I train with are 30 or 40 years younger than me,” she said. Holt finds that, now, at the CrossFit gym. “But all the hard work created a sense of family.” “We had morning weights and afternoon workouts and practices and study hall,” Christensen said. As a coach for 25 years at various places, she always stressed strength and conditioning. Growing up in Texas, she took to basketball early and lettered four years at Stephen F. Holt’s father was a running back at Michigan in the 1950s. Of the six events (testing strength, endurance and fitness) in her age group at last year’s world championships in Madison, Wisconsin, Holt finished first in four, winning by a large margin. “What’s awesome about it is you’re training and working with people who are willing to do something hard.” “With my personality, I like doing stuff that’s hard and challenging and difficult,” Holt said. “She had to be close to eight-and-a-half months pregnant and she was busting out sets of dips in the weight room and then running on the track,” she said.Ī self-proclaimed gym-rat all her life, Holt said she got into CrossFit training roughly 10 years ago. Holt’s workouts from that time – as if training for a maternity-division competition – stuck out in Sarah Christensen’s memory, too. “I remember when she was pregnant with her first child, Julie was in the weight room training with us until about the day before she gave birth,” Doolittle recalled. She has lived with this combination of ferocity and whimsy for a long time. Look at Julie Holt’s bio page on the CrossFit website and in the graphic that proclaims her “Fittest on Earth,” you’ll see a photo in which her musculature is evidence she is capable of delivering a beating, but her hair is scrunchy-ed back into a perky side-pony. That’s a good outlet for her intensity and strength.” – Heidi (Phillips) Doolittle, former Zags basketball player. “I would say I am not one bit surprised she is CrossFit champion of the world. She’s also still coaching: with husband Nick, for the Varese Skorpions in the Italian Football League.Ĭonsider it illustrative that neither of these extraordinary developments shocks anyone who played for her – almost as if they knew when she left Gonzaga that she would challenge the world. As age-group champion at the CrossFit Games in 2022, she earned the title: “Fittest Woman on Earth (65-plus).” So, perhaps unsurprisingly, the 66-year-old Holt has re-created herself while we weren’t watching. “I’m old, but I look good for an old lady.” – Julie HoltĬoaches leave, time passes, fans might not stay current with their careers.Ī colorful and fiery character, Julie Holt coached the Gonzaga women’s basketball team in the early 1990s with an unforgettable fervency.ĭecades later, former players start describing her with the word “competitive,” but then decide it’s too weak an adjective to capture the bulging-neck-vein stage Holt sometimes reached, and they upgrade their assessment to “very, very intense.”
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