Ways to support the nonprofit 501c3 Team Mash Elite:
1. Donate (we have several options from a simple one-time any amount donation to monthly pledges with benefits from our team)
2. Sponsor our Team (this is for businesses or individuals that specialize in philanthropy)
è Email me directly at masheliteperformance@gmail.com
Mash Elite Mission
and Future
Today I want to tell all of you
more about this crazy team that I’ve created. Since I created the team and
formed it into a 501c3 nonprofit, I haven’t done a great job telling our story.
For some of you, you might be inspired to start a nonprofit, and for some of
you, you will get to know more about the team. All you normally hear about are
the athletes winning National Championships and flying around the world to
represent Team USA. There is so much more to know.
Like most nonprofits, I’m excited
about #givingtuesday , and yes, I am hoping that some of you all see it in your
heart to support our organization. However, unlike a lot of other nonprofits, I
don’t want you giving blindly to Mash Elite Strength. I want you to know who we
are, what our mission is, where we are in the process, and our future goals.
Then if you like what you read, then and only then I want your support. Here
goes!
I left MuscleDriver USA at the end
of 2015. Luckily I already had a gym and team of my own, so I naturally started
growing my own team. Even when I was at MDUSA, at the American Open and
National Championships, I would coach the 15-17 athletes for Team MDUSA and
10-15 of my own. Man those were crazy competitions. I have no idea how I was
coaching that many athletes. I don’t think that I could physically do that now.
However when you love a sport so much, you’re able to get through the storm.
I left MDUSA with a vision. I
wanted to create a team like we had at MDUSA that could help support the dreams
of athletes in the sport of Olympic weightlifting. At MDUSA we supported mainly
Senior Athletes (best of the best regardless of age) with a gym to train,
coaches, programming, some sport’s medicine, and financially (monthly living
stipend, meet expenses, and travel). You might not like Brad Hess (former owner
of MDUSA), but he definitely put his money where his mouth was. He paid the top
performers really well.
MDUSA did a great job of helping
Senior Athletes, but I wanted to help Youth, Junior, and Senior athletes. I
left MDUSA wanting to help my athletes in all the same ways as we did at MDUSA
and more. However, I desired to bring the characters of weightlifting to life
along with the sport. I desired something bigger than we were doing at MDUSA,
which brings us to the present.
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| Feeling of Victory |
My goal from day one has been to
bring the characters of weightlifting to life, so the world might fall in love
with our sport. The only way to grow the sport is to bring it to life. I want
all the people of the United States to know the athleticism that goes into
performing a heavy Snatch. I want them to see the daily struggles that go into
life of a weightlifter. I don’t simply want a weightlifting team for my own
enjoyment. I do love my team, do don’t get me wrong. However I have a higher
purpose for my involvement in weightlifting.
Here are my goals for this team:
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| Our Facility |
1. Provide a Facility- we are doing well on this one. We have a 6,000
square foot beautiful facility that is stocked with all the bumpers and bars
that one could want thanks to Intek Strength and USA Weightlifting. We have all
the best accessory equipment Westside Barbell Belt Squat, Reverse Hyper, Glute
Ham Raises, Hyperextension, neck machine, and so much more. We have men and
women’s locker rooms with showers. We even have a hardwood rolling floor yoga
room that we mainly use as a warm up and cool down room complete with all the
body tempering devices. Once a Senior athlete makes it into the Top 10 at
Nationals, we don’t charge them for the facility, coaching, or programming.
Once a youth or junior athlete is in the Top 20 athletes in the country on the
rankings provided by USA Weightlifting, we don’t charge them for the facility,
coaching, or programming either.
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| Olympic weightlifting area and our youth |
2. Provide the Best Coaching- until recently I had Coach Don McCauley
as the other coach in our training room. It was amazing having two Senior
International Coaches in the same room. If I couldn’t help an athlete, he would
say something that would trigger the proper response and vice versa. As you
might know, he is sick and battling cancer right now, so he moved home to
Florida. Coach Crystal McCullough has stepped right up and is learning quickly.
She’s a natural born coach, but she just needs a bit more experience. She’s
getting plenty of that. I have to say that she is doing a great solo job with
some of our youth athletes.
3. Help Our Top Athletes Financially- right now we are able to
financially assist our Top 4 Onsite Senior Athletes financially with a monthly
stipend. We also pay for the travel and meet expenses or the American Open and
Senior Nationals for our Senior Athletes ranked in the Top 10. Here is the
first place where funds are needed. The biggest expense is sending our coaches
to all the National Events (American Open, Senior Nationals, AO1,2, and 3
Series, Youth Nationals, and Junior Nationals. I’ll talk more about that later.
I would like to assist our Junior and Youth athletes more as well especially
travel expenses and meet registration. The Youth and Junior athletes are the
future of the sport. Housing is the other component of the financial goal.
4. Assist with Education- this is one of my biggest goals for
several reasons. First I want my athletes to have a life after weightlifting.
Yes I want them to win the Olympics one day, but I also want them to be able to
support a family later in life. I want them to have a career that they love.
Not to mention if we ever want to grow the sport to the level of football and
basketball in America, we have to show parents and athletes that there is a future
with this sport. My hat is off to the folks at USA Weightlifting for releasing
the College Scholarship fund for the Top youth and junior athletes in the
country. I am working with two colleges right now on starting a program, but
now I have a much better plan. My goal is to raise money for a scholarship fund
for my athletes to use at whichever school they choose modeling USA
Weightlifting’s Scholarship. That way, it could be used at whichever school
fits the athlete the most. For example, one of my athletes wants to go to a
welding school. Awesome, that’s a solid career. We just need folks like you
donating to our cause.
5. At Risk Program- this is the program that I want to grow the most.
We define at risk as any child that is at risk of going down the wrong path.
This could be:
·
Single Parent Children struggling
·
Children in a violent home
·
Children in an unstable home ex. Parents
fighting all the time
·
Children into drugs
·
Fighting at school
·
Orphans
·
Neglect
·
Poverty
Anything that endangers a child’s
future is classified as ‘at risk’ by our program. The problem is that we need a
full-time person to kick this program off the ground. We need someone to make
contacts with other youth programs and schools in the area. We need someone to
arrange transportation or provide transportation to and from the gym.
We want to use weightlifting to
teach the children all the lessons that the sport of weightlifting provides
like: work ethic, goal setting, perseverance, and dedication. Then we want the
‘at risk’ director to teach them how to apply those lessons to life in a ‘Life
Skills’ course. We desperately need the funds for this position.
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| Support the Team by Clicking Link |
We’ve done a great job of
recruiting and coaching the best weightlifting athletes in America. This year,
we had four (two men and two women) Senior Athletes on the Senior World Team,
which is 20% of the entire team. That’s our greatest International
accomplishment to date. We also had three athletes on the Youth Pan American
Team with 14-year-old Morgan McCullough winning the Gold Medal. We have two
athletes locked on the Youth World Team for next year, and three sitting on
Junior Teams for next year. We have three other athletes that should make Youth
or Junior Teams and two athletes that might make Senior Teams. So no matter
what we are going to have between 7-15 athletes on Team USA next year.
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| Support the Team by Clicking Link |
That’s a pretty good start for a
small program in Lewisville, NC. However, we have a mission that with your help
we will continue to pursue. Here’s our driving mission in all of this:
We want to help grow the sport of
weightlifting in America. We want to recruit, coach, and support athletes all
the way to Olympic Gold. To do that we have to continue to grow and improve our
youth and junior squads as they are the future. We also have to provide the
necessary tools and financial assistance to help our athletes reach their goals
and to build their future adult lives (college and trade schools). We want to
use our success in the sport to help our local community with the best ‘at
risk’ program in the United States. We want to teach our Team USA athletes to
give back by assisting with the ‘at risk’ program.
It’s a big goal. I know that, but
with your help we can do it together. We’ve already accomplished more anyone
believed that we would. 2019 is going to be the best year yet. We have an
incredible group of people that love our team and what we are doing. We also
have some amazing parents that have agreed to volunteer their time to get the
program off the ground. Thank God for these amazing people.
Here is what we need most urgently:
·
Money for
travel- next year is going to have our athletes traveling all around the
United States and the world. USA Weightlifting pays of most International
Travel for the athletes, but not for the coaches. With our athletes qualifying
for meets in Fiji and Cuba, our coaches are left with forking out thousands of
dollars for travel.
·
At Risk
Program- we need a full-time person to really kick off this program, and we
need a small bus or van to transport the youth.
·
College
Fund- I’m excited to start this fund for our top men and women to build
their futures while training to be the best athlete in the world. I love the
thought of allowing the athlete to choose the University or trade school that
fits their needs the best. Along with USA Weightlifting’s fund, we could really
make a difference in the lives of these young athletes.
Anything above and beyond these
urgent goals would go directly towards the support of the athletes (‘at risk’
included in this). If we want to recruit the best athletes in America, we have
to provide them with a future in the sport. Imagine if you could go to a parent
and say:
“Hello Mrs. Jones, we can provide a
college scholarship to your daughter, provide housing, and pay her a $2,500 per
month with all expenses of the sport covered. Plus she can travel the world
representing Team USA for free, and receive a stipend, bonuses, scholarship,
sports psych, nutrition, recovery, and more from USA Weightlifting.”
When we make statements like this,
we can recruit the best athletes in America. Then we can start dominating the
sport of weightlifting Internationally like America already does in sports like
track and field and swimming. USA Weightlifting under the guidance of Phil
Andrews has already made massive strides in what they provide to athletes. Now
it’s up to the clubs to do their part. I am trying.
Anyway, this is who we are, what we
want to accomplish, and where we plan on going. I want to provide more and more
free content to all of you to educate you more about the sport in hopes that
you will grow the sport in your own area. We plan on producing more videos and
podcasts with our athletes, so you all can get to know them. I want you to feel
a part of the team because you are. I can’t do this alone. We already have four
amazing sponsors that have helped us get this far:
Premier Sponsors
·
Harbinger
Fitness Belts, Straps, and Wraps ( https://harbingerfitness.implus.com/ )
·
Mash
Elite Performance ( www.mashelite.com )
Sponsors
·
WOD Fitters Bands and Recovery Tools ( www.wodfitters.com)
We couldn’t survive without these
amazing companies. If we are to grow further, we need all of you to join the
team. If you feel led to help, you can:
1. Donate (we have several options
from a simple one-time any amount donation to monthly pledges with benefits
from our team)
2. Sponsor our Team (this is for
businesses or individuals that specialize in philanthropy)
I want to thank all of you for
following this team. We appreciate you all so much. If you have purchased
anything from Mash Elite Performance, you are making the dreams of our athletes
come true with 12% of all gross profits going to our team. We’ve already
accomplished more than anyone thought that we could. Now we know that we can
help USA Weightlifting take this beautiful sport to the next level.
All my thanks,
Coach Travis Mash
Head Coach Mash Elite
USA Weightlifting Senior
International Coach
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