Spartan Profiles: Aaron Crumbaugh
AMAZING RACER
His competitiveness was clear as a student at MSU, when he joined the men’s volleyball team without ever having played the sport before and winding up four years later as an All-American. But it really became clear in this season’s The Amazing Race 6, a CBS Emmy-award winning reality show. Contestant Aaron Crumbaugh, ’02, and girlfriend and fellow actor Hayden Kristianson—tabbed as the “dating actors”—won the race’s first leg from Chicago to Reyjavic, Iceland, a trek that included a 260-mile drive to Europe’s largest glacier, a snowmobile ride across it, and a treacherous climb up an ice wall.
“We covered 45,000 miles and visited 10 countries on four continents, and took 30 flights in 30 days,” says Crumbaugh from L.A., where he works as a model for Next. “This was by far the best experience of my life so far. We hate to use the word ‘amazing,’ but that’s what it was.”
A native of Ithaca, Aaron chose MSU because “it was a family tradition.” His father, grandmother, sister, and uncles were all Spartans. In high school he went to his sister Marci’s volleyball games (how can you not like “200 girls in Spandex,” he explains) and developed an interest in the sport itself. At MSU, he joined the men’s volleyball club and credits coach Sante Perrelli for being a friend and mentor. “We won a whole bunch of tournaments in the Midwest,” he recalls, “and in my senior year we were fifth in the country.”
Aaron moved to L.A. in 2003, and “within one week I met Hayden at a Mexican restaurant, and it was love at first sight.” Hayden hails from Chewelah, Washington. “In the show you’ll see us fighting all the time, but they are just arguments,” explains Aaron. “Who doesn’t argue. What they don’t show is that we usually make up within five minutes.”
Their ultimate reward could be $1 million. So far they’ve won a free trip to Hawaii, after the complete show is aired. “That’s too bad,” says Aaron. “We wanted to see MSU play Hawaii.”
