A Seymour native recently traveled to Greece, where he had the opportunity to compete in the 2018 Spartan Trifecta World Championship and came home with five medals.

Tyler Dean currently lives in Westfield but grew up in Jackson County and graduated from Seymour High School in 2011. He works as a welder and fabricator at Westfield Steel and has been training in mixed martial arts for three years. Currently, he trains at Circle City Martial Arts and Fitness.

During Dean’s time at Seymour High School, he was on the football team for four years, a basketball manager for two years and a baseball manager during his senior year.

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When he first learned he was eligible to participate in the sporting event in Greece, it took him by surprise.

“Initially, I didn’t know that I had qualified for it until I received a notification email,” Dean said. “I thought it was cool that I qualified but didn’t think I could go because a trip to Greece would be expensive.”

A coworker found out Dean had qualified for the event and told Fritz Prine, president and chief financial officer of Westfield Steel, and subsequently got called into Prine’s office.

“I got to work and then he called me into his office and asked if I was going to the event in Greece,” Dean said. “I told him I was probably not going due to expenses.”

Dean said they had a fundraiser for him at work and made $10 stickers to go toward donations, which sponsored his trip and covered expenses of around $2,500.

“It was definitely an overall great experience,” Dean said. “I got to meet a ton of people from around the world.”

In order to qualify for the competition, participants had to place in the top 3,000 of their age group.

“I barely made the cut and came in at roughly 2,872 worldwide out of my age group,” Dean, 25, said. “This took me by surprise because I had participated in some previous races in the U.S. just for fun and didn’t know I’d done that well.”

Dean was in Sparta, a city in Laconia, on the Peloponnese in Greece, from Nov. 2 to 4. Over the course of the weekend, he said there was a ceremony the first night, introducing all of the 57 countries that were being represented.

“Saturday, they had the Spartan Super, which was the 8-plus-mile course, which was actually 10 miles,” Dean said. “Then they had the Spartan Sprint, which was a 5-mile course, and I only had a 15-minute rest between both races.”

Dean said the reason he didn’t have much rest time was because he had just rolled both of his ankles in the river during the 10-mile course.

“That injury kind of set me back,” he said. “I had just enough time to put away my medal and my shirt. Then 15 minutes later, I was back at the starting line for the second race.”

Dean said he had started off pretty well but then rolled both of his ankles in the river again, about the same spot where it happened before.

“I kept going, and needless to say, I was limping, and there were a lot of rocks,” Dean said. “I also had to crawl under about a mile of barbed wire in the river.”

Dean also suffered an Achilles tendon injury during the first 5 miles of the Spartan Beast, about a 20-mile course.

“I went down instantly and thought I’d torn my Achilles tendon because it was numb for almost an hour,” Dean said. “I couldn’t put any weight on it, and I wanted to run, but physically, I couldn’t.”

Then Dean got back into the river, the same one where he had rolled his ankles, but that time, he managed to avoid the more treacherous part of the river and was able to stay in the water long enough to ice the new injury.

“Both my feet were about numb, and that’s when I started to run again, and as the numbness wore off, I started to feel the pain come back,” Dean said. “That’s when I would back off, but today, I’m feeling 110 percent better and believe that my Achilles tendon is a lot stronger than it was before.”

Participants also had to do a bucket carry, where each person had to fill up a bucket with rocks and carry it for almost a mile. The bucket weighed between 60 and 80 pounds.

“A new event they had was the marble stone carry, an uphill obstacle course on that Sunday, and it was about a mile uphill and a mile downhill,” Dean said. “Then the sandbag carry was a 60-pound pancake sandbag, a mile and a half uphill and downhill, very steep, and some people were falling.”

There was also the multi-rig, a course with rings and ropes, and a spear throw in the river while holding a shield, but the toughest obstacle Dean had to tackle was scaling a 10-foot wall.

“It took me three tries, but I finally made it, surprisingly,” Dean said.

In those two days, Dean said he ran 35 total miles.

“Here in the United States, they also have Trifecta race weekends, and I’ve done a few of those,” he said.

In Greece, Dean said the language barrier was a little difficult. While some people spoke English, it was spotty, but as long as he got the concept of what they were trying to say, he was OK.

“I did try to learn a little of the language before I went over there,” he said. “They are great people over there, and since being in the Navy, I’ve traveled to many countries, and Greece had some of the kindest people.”

He served in the Navy from 2013 to 2015 after he finished college at Vincennes University, where he studied radio and television broadcasting.

“After college, he decided to take the leap and go into the Navy and was deployed for nine months,” said Dean’s grandmother, Shirley Schrink of Seymour. “He got to do a lot of things and see a lot of countries during that time.”

Schrink said being in the Navy for two years helped Dean with that process because the Navy training helps them get their bodies ready for whatever situation might come up.

While on deployment on the USS Truxtun, Dean traveled to France, the Greek islands of Crete and Cypress, Romania, Bulgaria, Israel, Jordan, Dubai and other locations.

“It was really neat to see them come home because my husband, John, and I got to go,” Schrink said. “You can’t believe how big Norfolk, Virginia, is, and there’s about a million people on that base.”

She said the tunnel they had to drive through to get there is underwater, and the ships are going over the drivers who are in the tunnel.

“When they came home and Tyler’s ship came into port, they were all standing up at the top, and it was really neat to see,” Schrink said.

As for Dean traveling to Greece, Schrink didn’t want her grandson to go and was afraid he might get hurt, she said.

“I tried to talk him out of it, but he wanted to go,” she said. “I had the phone right next to me and was really worried about him maybe not being able to get back home again being in a foreign country.”

She is glad he did make it back and has the five medals to show for all of his accomplishments.

Dean said he is undecided if he would ever go back to Greece to compete in the Spartan Trifecta World Championship, but he likes to push his body to the limit and then break those limits.

Coming up next for Dean is his mixed martial arts kickboxing bout Jan. 26 in Fort Wayne. He plans to be fighting at 120 pounds and should have tickets on hand soon.

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Event;Date                     

Chicago Spartan Super;June 2018   

Ohio Spartan Sprint;June 2018    

Ohio Spartan Beast;June 2018     

Fort Knox Spartan Sprint (twice);July 2018       

Indiana Spartan Sprint;July 2018 

West Virginia Spartan Sprint;August 2018

West Virginia Spartan Super;August 2018      

West Virginia Beast;August 2018 

Michigan Spartan Sprint;September 2018      

Michigan Spartan Super;September 2018      

Chicago Spartan Beast;September 2018 

Spartan Trifecta World Championships;November 2018  

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