Every year brings forth a new destination for weightlifters, at least for a weekend. Anywhere from Missouri or Pennsylvania down to Texas or Florida. These are the places I’ve been able to experience just in the past year due to the extracurricular activity that has developed into a passion: weightlifting. These trips would be nonexistent if I wasn’t a competitive lifter; these so-called vacations were earned.

    This year Mason Hofstedt, Ellie Stodden, and myself qualified for the opportunity to lift at the 2017 Junior National Weightlifting Championship, which was held on the last weekend of February. This competition is for the best olympic style lifters twenty years old and younger traveling from all over the country. It can be challenging for high school age lifters to total enough for this event, but there is a Youth National Championship with age categories and lower qualifying totals that are geared as more achievable for high school, and even middle school, student athletes.  A total is the sum of the heaviest weights lifted in the Snatch and Clean and Jerk for that athlete. There are minimum numbers for each weight class that lifters must hit in order to be eligible to compete at certain events.

    Small town Cannon lifters found ample success in Kansas City, Missouri, this year. Ellie was first up, her session (53kg women’s B session) started bright and early at 8:30 AM Friday morning. She impressively ended up in the middle of the pack for her session. Getting to see other lifters from all around the country in the same place as Ellie to achieve similar goals really “opened her eyes to the dedication and hard work put into the sport in order to achieve those goals.” Saturday evening it was Mason’s time to shine. His meet day adrenaline always gives him immense strength, enough to break a school record with his 113 kilo (248 lbs) snatch that has been in place since the year he was born. It was set by Dan Meyers, who ironically was one of Mason’s football coaches this past season. That, along with his 134 kilo clean and jerk put him on top of the B session. By Sunday afternoon it was my turn to step on the platform. My 71 kilo snatch was a meet personal best, and I attempted state records in both snatch and clean and jerk but came up just short. With a 161 kg total I finished 7th in the A session.

      Now, back in Minnesota, the weightlifting team is prepared for the state meet  on March 11th at Lakeville South High School. In Minnesota, weightlifters are fortunate enough to have local meets run by high school programs. What is special about national meets though, is that they are a way for young people to travel and experience cities showcase the variation this country has to offer. Head coach, Scott Safe, explained to us as we sat in a booth in a downtown Kansas City grill how the locations for these meets are decided. He stated they select places that they foresee as being easy to navigate to, like close to an airport with easily accessible public transportation options. Another factor is the activities and sites that can be enjoyed within the city that lifters and their families, fans, and coaches, can visit. These include famous restaurants and historical sites that cities are known for. In Kansas City, one was their Barbeque joints. Being there through the weightlifting program, meant that participants and their families got discounts on hotel prices and coupons to use at shops, making it an affordable way to get a vacation.

  Overall these trips are an all-around way to grow, not only as an athlete but as a young well-rounded individual as well. Of course we’re there to succeed on the platform, but more important are the memories made in the hotel pool playing chicken, or buying doughnuts to eat after weigh-ins at the best doughnut shop in the city, or walking down the city sidewalks seeing all the unique offerings this world has depending on where you are and what makes each place special. Next up for me: Colorado and California.