Students in the powerlifting club have performed impressively in their first season, but despite their success, not many people have even heard of them.

The powerlifting club has been hard at work in the past couple of months, with many of the members medaling on multiple occasions. Even after such an accomplished season, many people don’t even know they exist.

“It’s a very determined, hard-working environment and everybody is there to do the same thing: get better, get stronger, and lift more,” sophomore Michaela Turney said. “It’s a very encouraging environment too.”

Members of the club were mainly recruited by word of mouth, usually recommended by their coaches. Many of the athletes in this club decided to join in order to improve performance in other sports.

“In general, it makes you a lot stronger and we also practice being explosive because you want to be quick with a lift rather than super slow to avoid risking not being able to get a certain weight,” Turney said.

The club isn’t as intense as other sports since they only have to go to practice once a week and the same for competitions. Despite this, it still requires a lot of dedication.

“Tuesdays we have official practices, but Mondays, Thursdays, and Wednesdays are optional and those are at 6:30 in the morning,” freshman Alyssa Jackson said.

The freshmen had to work the hardest to keep up with their competition since they weren’t always competing against athletes their age.

“There are weight groups and I’m in one of the higher ones so I’m basically going against juniors and seniors,” Jackson said. “At first, it was kinda easy, but then everyone started going up weight, and so did I, and it got a lot harder.”

During competitions, which are on the Saturdays, athletes compete in three different categories: squat, bench and hang clean. The highest weight from all of these categories ends up counting toward the athletes’ final scores.

“You have three attempts to do a lift, (three squat attempts, three bench attempts, and three clean attempts) and the highest weight that you actually complete a lift at is added to the highest weight you did for the other two lifts,” sophomore Israel Barraza said. “Then you put that together, that’s your total. That’s how they do first, second and third, whoever gets the highest total.”

Powerlifting isn’t like all the other sports we have at our school. It’s a very independent competition, but everyone encourages each other within the team.

“I relate it mostly to track, not really other sports,” Barraza said. “Just because you’re individually pushing yourself and you’re competing by yourself, but everybody around you is kind of your family.”

Everyone involved in powerlifting relates the team to a family. They all bonded over their hard work and early mornings.

“I just really like the family concept of it,” Jackson said. “It’s like an individual sport but as we come together it turns into a family sport.”

There are some fun aspects of the club that the members really enjoy. Every week the club had a Yoga Wednesday to chill out halfway through the week.