CARL & JACKIE DONADIO

Recorded a few years ago on The Community Conversation podcast — the whole Donadio family, including Drew and Dani. Carl and Jackie are the first former members featured in the 100 in 100 series.

Every 100 in 100 story so far has featured someone currently training at Prototype. Carl and Jackie Donadio break that pattern on purpose. They moved from Grafton to South Carolina a few years back, and bringing former members like them back into this series was part of the plan from the very beginning — Mike just wasn't sure it would land. Would someone who'd left the gym still want to be featured? Would anyone reading these stories even remember them?

On June 27th, during Prototype's HYROX simulation, Carl walked back through the door — in town to help his middle son move south from Boylston. He found Mike, gave him a hug, and told him he'd been following the 100 in 100 stories from 900 miles away, still feeling like part of a community he'd technically left years earlier. That was the answer Mike needed. Carl and Jackie were the obvious place to start.

Long before any of that, Jackie held out on CrossFit for a while. She'd done yoga, Anytime Fitness, boot camps — the usual rotation — before a friend finally talked her into trying Prototype in March 2014. Mike walked her through wallballs on day one. She thought they looked simple. Nine reps in, she felt like she might throw up. She kept coming back anyway.

Carl thought the whole thing was ridiculous. For almost two years, every time Jackie came home buzzing about a workout, he had the same line ready: you drank the Kool-Aid. He was not going to be one of those people.

The month before, Jackie had bought him a Prototype trial as a Christmas gift — half present, half dare. He stepped on the scale two days after Christmas and got his answer. His first class was that December. He never looked back. The guy who mocked the Kool-Aid for two straight years drank it harder than anyone.

What kept them both showing up wasn't willpower. It was the schedule and the people. Prototype ran classes from 5:00 AM to 7:30 PM back then, which meant there was always a way to make it work. Jackie found her spot in the 3:30 class; Carl claimed the 7:00 AM crew as his own. Two different training times, one shared habit that neither of them broke for a decade.

A Decade, Not a Phase

Ten years is long enough for a gym to stop being a gym. Jackie did her first CrossFit Open in 2016 during Friday Night Lights, front and center, judged by Kathy Milligan, certain the 28-minute workout would never end. Carl did his first Open a few months into training only because Coach Jon told him he had nothing to lose. He's done every Open since. Their kids, Drew and Dani, grew up doing partner WODs with their parents on Saturday mornings — the kind of family tradition that started as a way to spend time together and turned into something both of them still talk about.

Carl and Jackie's team at a Row for Westborough event.

Then came the pandemic, and Prototype became something else entirely: the reason a family got out of bed. Every morning at 7:00, Carl, Jackie, and their kids did the virtual workout together — first in the basement because it was too cold outside, then out in the yard once the weather turned. Some mornings nobody felt like it. They pushed each other anyway. "We get to do this" became the phrase that got them through it.

Murph, at home, during the pandemic — still a family workout.

The Move South

Carl and Jackie always planned to head south once they retired. They just did it sooner than planned. Leaving Massachusetts meant leaving the 7:00 AM crew, the Saturday partner WODs, and the coaches who'd shaped a decade of their lives — Jon's steady presence through both of their journeys, and BZ's constant nudge for Jackie to show up more often, which always seemed to work.

Jackie tried Burn Bootcamp first. The calorie burn was there, but the muscle tone she'd built over ten years started slipping. Carl, meanwhile, had found CrossFit 843 and was loving it — so Jackie made the switch too. It wasn't Prototype. But it was the same shape of thing: a group of people who showed up for each other, a coaching staff that actually knew your name, a community that reminded them daily of exactly what they'd loved about home.

Carl is close to 60 now. He calls himself in the best shape of his life — a guy who lost the ability to run in his 40s from knee issues and weight gain, and has since finished multiple 5Ks and a 10K with Jackie. Both of their kids became committed CrossFitters in their own right. When the family gets together now, a workout is still part of the plan.

Nobody came to Prototype looking for a friendship that would outlast a zip code and survive a 900-mile move. That's exactly what Carl and Jackie found — and it's why their story opens this next chapter of 100 in 100.

"So that I can be here for my kids, and eventually my kids' kids."

If you've ever left a place — a job, a team, a gym, a neighborhood — and found yourself still checking in on the people you left behind, this story is for you. A good community doesn't need you in the building. It just needs you to have been there once.

Come find out for yourself. Your first step is a free, no-pressure conversation.

I told you about that June 27th HYROX day up top because it's the reason this story exists. But it's not the only proof Carl and Jackie earned a place in this series.

At our 2023 holiday party, we inducted Carl and Jackie into our Hall of Fame. Technically, they hadn't quite earned it yet by the numbers — but we knew they would have within the year, and we also knew they'd be in South Carolina by then. So we did it early. They meant too much to this community to make them wait for a technicality they wouldn't be around to see.

That's part of what I love about this place. It doesn't matter how far you move or how much time has passed — Carl walks back through our doors when he's in town for work and it's like he never left. We just pick up right where we left off, every time. That's what community actually looks like to me. We miss them, but they'll never really be strangers.

This story was developed through written responses submitted by Carl and Jackie and shaped with the help of AI writing tools. The facts, quotes, and experiences are their own — AI helped organize and present them in a format worthy of the story they've lived.