The Miss FAMU Fitness Pageant and Mr. FAMU Bodybuilding contest Tuesday evening was a night full of screams, beams, and fantasy dreams.
Bettina Byrd won the fitness pageant while Teddy Atkins successfully defended his bodybuilding title.
Fitness winner Byrd, 21, a fourth year, business major from Chattanooga, Tennessee was elated but surprised that she won. “I was surprised, in my opinion Robin was great, she played sports I was really surprised because Robin was great. Everyone in the changing room was talking about her routine.”
Although Byrd was surprised to win she did confess to putting a lot of work in the gym to get prepared.
“I trained {anywhere between} 12-15 hours a week for probably the last month,” Byrd said.
Byrd admitted the completion was tough but appreciated the diversity in the group of girls participating in the contest.
Byrd stressed the importance of fitness stating, “Fitness is important, and it promotes healthy women, instead of masculine women that work out in the gym thirty hours a week.”
The whistling and cat calls in the women’s competition paled in comparison to the thunderous yelling and screaming that took place in the bodybuilding competition. Teddy Atkins along with six competitors strutted their stuff for ninety minutes in front of their greatly appreciative female co-eds.
Atkins, 23, a senior, psychology/criminal justice major from Ft. Lauderdale who carries a 4.0 GPA won the competition for the second year in a row, but to much stiffer competition.
With all the time and attention Atkins paid to his studies one would be surprised to find that he spent three hours a day for the last six weeks working out in the gym preparing for this contest.
“I had to work harder to get bigger, this year the competition was a lot stiffer than last year,” Atkins said.
“Although last year was more fun, the competition is really friendly because I trained some of the other competitors.”
Bob Carroll, who is the director of campus recreation, was really happy with the turnout and participation of the students this year compared to others in the past.
“It feels good to be able to help tomorrow’s future, hopefully sometime in the near future we can get all the colleges in the state to come to FAMU and have a state wide collegiate fitness and bodybuilding competition,” Carroll said.
Will Brown can be reached at willbitsgood48@aol.com.