This is just a dream come true to be able to make it this far.”

Corbin Riley

BELL BUCKLE, Tenn. – Corbin Riley’s first love has always been baseball. Ever since he was three years old, the Webb School student-athlete has been drawn to the diamond more than anything. However, over the past couple of years, the 15-year old has become one of the young Crossfit competitors in the entire country after he qualified for the CrossFit Games in San Jose, California, held from July 24-26.

“This is a huge deal,” his coach Matt Henderson said, “There are people who train their entire lives and don’t make it to the CrossFit Games. To be where Corbin is, to even make it from the open competition to the quarterfinals, he’s in the top 25%. Then, to move on to the semifinals, he’s in the top 10% or so from the quarterfinals, and in the end, he’s in the top 1% of his age group that’s moving on to the Crossfit Games.”

There were 116 competitors in the 2026 14-15 year old age group semifinal that was held from May 7th through May 11th, all online. Typically the semifinals are held in Birmingham, Alabama, but this year the event organizers decided to hold them virtually with the all-encompassing event set for the West Coast.

Riley started moderately training nearly two years ago, but after he qualified for the quarterfinals in 2025, he and his camp decided to lock in and aggressively train heading into 2026. 

“I started with the CrossFit class in August of 2024, and I just did that consistently throughout the year,” he said, “Then, I started working hard and consistently on the programs after that to qualify for the Games.

His coach added on.

“I think one of the most impressive things about what Corbin has done is that he hasn’t been doing this for very long relative to some of his peers that he’s competing against,” Henderson explained, “For example, he’s been doing CrossFit for almost two years now, but it wasn’t competitive competitive CrossFit. He was kind of just coming in for class, but he wasn’t locked in to competing necessarily. The people that he’s competing with now, they honestly have quite a few years on him. Just the amount of growth that Corbin has had since October is extremely impressive.” 

The CrossFit Open round took place between February 26th and March 16th, followed by the quarterfinals which were held from March 26-30. After Riley’s run came to a close in the quarterfinals in 2025, Henderson gives credit to a trip down to Florida for the stark improvement from the rising sophomore.

“We decided to go to the competition in Pensacola last September, and usually that is a very big competition for athletes that go,” Henderson explained, “It’s not quite like the Crossfit Games, but anybody who is anybody is usually there, so it was a good reference point for where he would finish at even though we had not been training competitively yet. When he went there, there were a couple of guys that we knew had made some semifinals before, and Corbin eventually finished on the podium down there. That is when me and him and his family got together and had the conversation about how I think we have something here. If we step this up a notch, we can really get Corbin a step further. He was competing with a lot of these athletes and wasn’t even training to the same level that they were yet.”

“Just to see the level of growth since then, and then him being able to juggle playing another sport combined with the schoolwork has been really impressive,” he said, “A lot of kids he is competing with are only Crossfit athletes. For Corbin to make the growth that he’s been able to make just says a lot about how hard he’s worked.”

Riley isn’t only a CrossFit athlete. In fact, he is also a member of The Webb School baseball team. Riley was a freshman on the squad this past season that went all the way to the Division II Class A State semifinals before falling to St. George’s, the eventual State Runners-Up. As a first-year player in high school, Riley appeared in 23 games, delivering four hits, four walks, and was hit by three pitches at the plate. On the mound, he pitched 4.2 innings and gave up just one earned run while striking out five batters in five appearances out of the bullpen. Riley is excited and hopeful to continue his baseball career at Webb for next season.

“My love has definitely transferred over to CrossFit, but I definitely still enjoy baseball,” he admitted, “It’s fun to switch it up sometimes.” 

If becoming the highest-ranked American in the 14-15 year-old age group as well as 11th-ranked worldwide is just “switching it up”, then the rest of the CrossFit world needs to be on high alert moving forward. 

“I’ve always just enjoyed working out, and then after I started doing the class, it just became part of my weekly routine,” he explained, “It’s something I found interesting and enjoyed doing, and it’s good to try new things. It’s all kind of led me to this point. I always hoped I would, but I never really thought that I would get here.”  

After he qualified for the semifinals, Riley faced one more challenge on his road to San Jose: competing all alone in virtually an empty gym. 

 This year they decided to hold the semifinal competition online, and we held them at our gym,” Henderson said, “We had to set up cameras and tape off the area, and then we basically ran it like a normal semifinal event just with doing everything inside of our affiliate gym. Doing it online is a little different because we don’t know everyone else’s score. In a regular semifinal, you’re in an arena around multiple athletes, but with the online semis, you have no idea where everyone is. You’re literally just going as hard as you can and as fast as you can, and hoping that once the scores come out, you did what you needed to do.”

When the dust settled after the four-day competition, Riley’s name sat 11th in the international leaderboard, and he had the best score among fellow Americans with 111 points. 

As an aside, in CrossFit competitions, the scoring is most akin to Golf with the goal being to end up with the lowest possible score. In the semifinals, Riley finished with 111 points across five different events. 

The five workouts were a combination of different exercises that included bodyweight movements, conditioning workouts, and weightlifting.The first event was a timed workout featuring five rounds of seven reps of squat snatches at 95lbs followed by three rope climbs to 15 feet per round. With a 15 minute maximum, Riley finished a respectable 31st with a time of 10 minutes and 15 seconds.

The second round of workouts were more challenging, and it saw less than 15 athletes actually fully complete it within the allotted time of 15 minutes. To start, there were three sets of 20 lateral burpee box jump-overs and 10x50-foot shuttle runs. Once completed, the athletes then moved onto the second part featuring three rounds of 100 double-unders followed by a 50-foot handstand walk. Riley finished in 36th with 293 total reps completed.

The third set of workouts was where the Webb sophomore began to make his climb up the leaderboard. It featured two timed rounds of a 1,000 meter row, 50 thrusters, and 30 chest-to-bar pull-ups with a 25-minute cap. Riley secured 10th place with an impressive time of 15 minutes and 32 seconds.

He secured a second-consecutive top-10 finish in the deadlift portion. The fourth round of workouts was one deadlift every minute until failure or until the allotted 10 minutes were up while increasing the weight with each lift. The first lift began at 185 lbs, the second increased to 205 lbs, and then 215 lbs, 225 lbs, 245 lbs, 255 lbs, 275 lbs, 285 lbs, 295 lbs, and finally maxing out at 305 lbs. Riley finished in eighth place with 10 lifts before performing extremely well on the tiebreaking lift to secure eighth position. 

Finally, the fifth set of workouts pushed each athlete to complete as many reps as possible within 10 minutes for a 50-foot walking lunge with two 35 lb dumbbells, followed by strict hand-stand pushups that began at two reps and increased by two every set, alternating exercises. Riley finished in 26th with 61 reps, and reached the Top-20 threshold it took to qualify for the CrossFit Games with a comfortable 11th-place finish. 

“People work tirelessly for their whole lives and never make it to this point,” Riley said, “This is just a dream come true to be able to make it this far. Ever since I learned about CrossFit, it’s just something that I’ve dreamed of qualifying for. I’ve watched just about every CrossFit Games that I’ve been able to because it was something I was looking forward to. Being able to qualify for it, it’s just super exciting, and I can’t be happier with how I finished.”

How does a rising sophomore train and prepare for those workouts at such a high level? Riley says that during the school year, his days consist of school, practice, homework, workout, homework, and sleep.

“I train about 1.5-2.5 hours a day every week,” he said, “Sometimes it’s early mornings, other times it’s late nights after school and [baseball] practice. I just try to fit it in whenever I can just to be ready for the next competition.”

Riley’s next competition will be at the 20th-annual CrossFit Games, and they will be held in San Jose, California, from July 24-26, 2026, live on YouTube. 

To help pay for the trip across the country, Riley and his family are holding a fundraiser to help pay for expenses to allow the sophomore to compete amongst the best in the world. If you or someone you know would like to donate any amount to support the local kid’s trek across the United States, you can reach out to Corbin’s mother, Kacy Riley, at (931)-224-5241 or at Kacywest@hotmail.com, and you can find more information on their website, www.corbinsroadtocali.com.