Roosevelt High School’s girls powerlifting team gives athletes the opportunity to build their strength and their confidence

When you think of powerlifting, the first image that may come to your mind is Mark Henry. The 6-foot-4-inches and 400-pound Olympian exudes the strength and size typically associated with the sport.

But for students at Franklin D. Roosevelt High School of Innovation, powerlifting can also come in the form of a typical teenage girl.

Taryn Saxon, Justice Mcfarland and Alexis Coit are the founding members of the Roosevelt girls powerlifting team. In their freshman year, all three athletes became interested in the sport because of the strength training component.

“I’m wanting to get stronger. I like lifting weights, that’s a hobby for me,” Saxon says. “So I decided now that we have a powerlifting team at the school that I wanted to join.”

Saxon added that Roosevelt already having a boys powerlifting team was influential to her choosing the school.

For Mcfarland and Coit, they both added the desire to try something new in addition to the influence of their coaches to try powerlifting out. All three teens play additional sports, whether it’s volleyball, dancing, swimming, or track and field.

Charles Howington, the football and powerlifting coach, says powerlifting is a workout that adds on to their current athletic training. When it came to the recruitment for powerlifting, he let the girls come to him to make the new team a reality.

“First, I had to test out their max in their three lifts, so squat, bench and deadlift,” he says.

With powerlifting, they are able to build up their strength to excel in their other passions. Their first year out of the gate wasn’t easy.

Howington says there are often rules that athletes have to squat certain depths, with two judges in competition watching their side depths and a third judge checking for other aspects of form.

“They have all these commands that you have to listen to, which is pretty hard, especially because it’s your first year doing it,” he says. “You’re just trying to lift the weight, and sometimes, you don’t hear the judges … It’s a little difficult sometimes, but luckily they listened very well.”

Well enough to qualify to compete in regionals, a big accomplishment for a first-year program.

“I was scared though because I felt like it was just too unreal,” Mcfarland says. “Like, as freshmen going to regionals, it was really exciting.”

While the young women have found a new found passion in powerlifting, there were pessimists at their start that made comments about the sport.

“Before starting, my mom did not want me to do it because she said I would get too manly, but I mean, I see other people do it,” Mcfarland says. “It’s true, a lot of people do get a lot manly, but I feel it depends like how you lift the weights. It depends how much you’re lifting, and I just didn’t believe it. I still wanted to try something new to see.”

For Coit, she says her cousin was flat out against it.

“He did not want me to do it because he thought I was going to get too buff and stuff. It was just a lot,” she says.

However, despite these opinions of what constitutes “manly,” all three still pursued powerlifting for themselves.

“Personally, I don’t care because it’s my body and what I want to do in life, so I could do whatever I want to,” Coit says, noting as long as she still gets parental approval.

She adds that powerlifting is often focused on boys, and for girls, it’s something very different.

“For me, it was building up my confidence, so I got confident every time that I lifted, and my coach, he supported, they supported me,” Saxon says of her teammates.

All three powerlifters have found a new found footing in the sport, despite how the sport can be male-dominated.

“You can’t just sit at home and not do things, you have to push yourself to try it, even if it does seem scary, or if people say it’s a bad thing to do, or make you too manly,” Mcfarland says. “You got to keep going and do what you believe in.”