Brick Native Todd Durkin, Partner Take Second In 'STRONG' Finale Thursday

Brick Township native Todd Durkin made it to the finale of NBC's fitness competition show "STRONG."

But the former Brick High School quarterback turned fitness trainer and his partner ran into a wall -- a 700-pound one -- and finished second in the competition.

The show, which is in its first season on the network, pairs male fitness trainers with female competitors with a focus on making them stronger and more physically fit. Weekly competitions test their strength and their teamwork, and out of the 10 teams that began the competition, just two remained in Thursday's finale: Durkin and his partner Brittany Harrell-Miller, and Bennie Wylie and Jill May.

Durkin, a 1989 graduate of Brick Township High School, is now a personal trainer and owns a gym Fitness Quest 10, in San Diego.

He got to the finale in typical Brick Dragon fashion -- by clawing and fighting his way there. Durkin and his first partner, Devon Cassidy, were eliminated in the early weeks of the game. But during Week 5, all the eliminated competitors were given the opportunity to win their way back into the competition by going through "The Elimination Tower," which consists of a series of challenges that test the competitors' agility, strength and tenacity.

Harrell-Miller, an eighth-grade algebra teacher from Kansas, was paired with Durkin after both finished with the top times in the tower that week.

In the weeks that followed, Durkin and Harrell-Miller faced the Elimination Tower repeatedly and fought through it each time, including in the ninth week, when Harrell-Miller was competing with an injured foot -- a bone bruise suffered when a large panel came down on her foot during the tower elimination challenge the previous week. Despite her injury, they set a record time in the tower, beating the team of Mathew Miller and Nicole Bentley, to reach the finale.

Thursday night, however, the two pairs faced a changed elimination tower. The "wishbone" that had been the first challenge in the tower was replaced with a battering ram and a wall that had to be knocked down.

More challenging was the four-piece stairway that replaced steamrollers and allowed access to the third level. When Durkin and Harrell-Miller pushed the first three pieces into the fourth, their progress stopped. It took them several seconds to get the 700-pound stairway moving -- time that ended up costing them the title.

When May and Wylie got their turn in the tower, they were able to keep the stairway moving -- albeit slowly -- when they got to the fourth piece. They also flew through the last two challenges in the tower -- the stack of alternating panels and the weights spelling out STRONG at the top -- and won by 16 seconds.

Harrell-Miller, however, had a philosophic response:

"We finished. That's what matters most."

(Todd Durkin and Brittany Harrell-Miller at Brick's Relay for Life, where most of the competitors of the show STRONG came out to support the event and participate in a special fitness program. Karen Wall photo)