This year students at THS had the opportunity to join a new winter sport, powerlifting. Powerlifting is just as it sounds, it is a weightlifting competition where students try to have the best lift in each of the categories, squat, bench, and deadlift. The team was led by Coach Megan Johnson, who brought powerlifting to THS.

“I helped the women’s team at my old school and loved doing it.” Johnson says, “I really wanted to start a team and was lucky enough to have support from admin.”

Starting a new team doesn’t come without its challenges, the team struggled with attendance for meets and in getting people to join the team and be committed to coming and being in the weight room.

“We’ve had 4 [students] go to meets and compete.” Johnson says, “We have around 15 for practices.”

Motivation is a large part of sports. The student-athletes need to be motivated to come to practices and go to meets. This was one of the challenges that many on the team needed to overcome this year.

“The biggest challenge was getting kids into the weight room and keep getting them to come back.” Johnson says, “It’s a sport that you must be motivated to do.”

Having attendance and people at practice were some of the external problems that the team faced. The students that continued in the sport have identified the mental part of lifting as being their biggest challenge.

“Some of the challenges were the mental part of the sport,” Sophomore, Nicolas Santiago says, “because a lot of us would doubt ourselves and fail a lift.”

Although the team had many challenges, they endured and had fantastic success with the students doing their best at maxing out and at meets.

“We had success with hitting maxes and the boys pushing themselves.” Johnson says, “I think after our first meet, the boys realized that they could keep up and outlift the bigger schools. That’s what motivated them throughout the season.”

Seeing the growth of the weight that they could lift, and the growth of their friends proved to be one of the highlights of the year.

“Being there to see my best friends hit weights they thought were astronomical at the beginning of the school year.” Senior, Jose Medina says, “As personal achievements go, hitting a 455 lbs. deadlift when at the beginning of the year it was a 335 lbs.”

The powerlifters this year were very successful! 4 students made it to state for powerlifting this year. The team hopes to see more students join the team next year!

Check out some quotes that are encouraging to Medina below!

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” – Socrates

“Do not however worry about your individual potential. Potential is only the expression of a possibility, something that could be assessed only in retrospect. In other words, you’ll never know how good you might have become unless you tried.” – Mile Mentzer