D10 NYC 2018 Yearbook, Part Two
July 16, 2018
For The D10 NYC 2018 Team Yearbook, click here. If you've attended or competed in both, you know The D10 NYC Team event and The D10 NYC Individual event have distinct personalities.
The Team event is effervescent with camaraderie and a sense of play. The Individual event vibrates with a more focused determination. Both are celebrations, and both consummate months of dedicated training and fundraising by D10 athletes. But like a proverbial firstborn child, The D10 NYC Individual event gets right down to business.
Undaunted by gray, heavy skies, athletes at the tenth annual D10 NYC broke long-standing records and established new benchmarks. They pushed The D10's impact on pediatric cancer research into the eight-digit range, and thousands of people around the world watched them do it live on NORMA, The D10's proprietary streaming software.
When the last score was in the books, the king stayed the king, and a new queen was crowned.
Women's Champion
Jade Dean of Uncommon Schools made one of the all-time D10 debuts in 2018. The mother of two boys registered a week after giving birth to her second son last June, and a year later, she hoisted him in one arm, and the D10 Women's trophy in the other. She raised $14,000 for Memorial Sloan Kettering along the way, by using social media and in-person events to get the word out.
Caroline Farkas of RBC Capital Markets and Samantha Santaniello of Point72 (above, center) joined "Queen Jade" on the podium, with the latter joining her in the 10K Club as well.
The full fundraising leaderboard is viewable here.
Men's Champion
Thomas White of Moelis & Co. repeated as D10 Men's Individual champion, despite a strong push from first-time competitors Ken Gunter of NinthDecimal (above, right) and Todd Leone of Moody's, who jumped into contention early when he broke the D10 Pull-Up record.
Not to be outdone, White, despite visibly battling a gimpy hamstring all day, set the standard in The D10's new Broad Jump event with a result of 10'6"; he added max or near-max scores in the 40 Yard Dash, the 500 Meter Row and the Bench Press to finish with a near-record total of 7840 points.
Full men's and women's leaderboards are viewable here.
Top Executive, aka "The Clinton Biondo Award"
Clinton Biondo, managing director at Fir Tree Partners, established a new D10 Pull-Up record in 2015 with 41 reps. Though Todd Leone would snatch the record from him minutes later, it's no less remarkable that Biondo upped his personal record to 43 Pull-Ups this year on the way to claiming the Top Executive trophy for the seventh consecutive time.
Top Fundraiser
When it comes to D10 fundraising, no firm can surpass RBC Capital Markets' pedigree. RBC VP Chris Henrich kept that tradition going this year with an individual fundraising total of $37,000 for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Get That Money, Son
Eric Vishnevetsky of UBS was the second-leading fundraiser this year, with an astonishing $28,000 in his first D10 campaign. He explained the techniques and strategies behind that success in our Fundraising Masterclass series, linked here. Against a lot of impressive competition, Eric's Mom earned this year's trophy for Best Fan Sign by cutting to the heart of The D10's philanthropic mission with humor and urgency. More proof that you should always listen to your mother.
The 10K Club
A few weeks before Game Day, we project out the number of D10 athletes on pace to raise more than $10,000 for Memorial Sloan Kettering. We do this in order to have the correct number of 10K Club trophies on stage during the Awards Ceremony. This year, our projections came in well short of the actual numbers. We'll keep raising our expectations, NYC, and we ask you to keep exceeding them.
Notable Performances
Thomas White sent a tremor through Wien Stadium when he pulled 1:17.3 on the 500 Meter Row - the second fastest time in D10 history. Minutes later, while White was still catching his breath, perennial 10K Club member Michael Bennett took his turn on the Concept2, turned up the damper setting, and wrenched a 1:17.1 out of the flywheel. Above photo: Bennett in the aftermath....the agony of accomplishment.
David Lazarus of Trillium Trading got $1000 of his fundraising total by scoring a come-from-behind victory in an exhilarating Fundraising Friday contest. The other $20,000, he got by toil - a big chunk of it when he pulverized his Marquee Event, and nearly doubled the sliding donations on his 500M Row.
UBS director Rob Befumo isn't just in the 10K Club. His career fundraising total for MSKCC is more than $100,000, with $26K this year alone.
Casey Gough of Morgan Stanley personifies the competitive drive of a D10 athlete. The second-year Letterman virtually doubled his fundraising, not to mention ripping off the best 20 Yard Shuttle in years.
Morgan Stanley SVP Crystal Ho is already registered for The D10 NYC 2019, and there's little doubt that she'll claim her third 10K Club trophy in as many years.
Make it two D10s, two top-four finishes for Sunniva Super Coffee CEO Jim DeCicco. The D10 looks forward to having Super Coffee's founders as well as its product on the field for years to come.
An upper body injury kept Jefferies' Randy Giveans' status for New York as "questionable" through Memorial Day. Ten days before The D10 NYC, the defending D10 Houston champ jumped into the fray and moved up the fundraising leaderboard like an extraordinary machine, finishing with $22,630 for MSKCC. His ferocity in the above photo will come as no surprise to anyone who's seen Randy dance.
Thank you to every D10 NYC athlete, sponsor, donor and supporter for making our tenth anniversary event the best D10 to date. We don't say the "best ever," because the best is yet to come. Register today for The D10 NYC 2019.