Saturday, August 8th, 2020. San Antonio, Texas.
Nothing is certain.
Had the pandemic not happened, we would have Olympians celebrating right now. We would be propped up by the medals hanging around their necks - a celebration of this quad and all of the work we have done to get clean athletes from the United States onto podiums for our wild sport.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, in the outskirts of San Antonio - just past the airport in a small, hidden gym called the Fit Stop, we were doing something that was very risky.
We were hosting a weightlifting meet.
It was small - maybe the smallest weightlifting meet Texas has seen in at least a decade that wasn’t in house. It was called the South Texas Invitational.
Adam White and a small group of lifters from Stone Henge pulled up late the night before with enough plywood to form a make-ship competition platform. It wasn’t enough to make the full regulation length, so there were some modifications after some words exchanged and we all went to bed that night with the promise of the first competition any of us had been to since lockdowns occurred 6 months before.
That morning, we started letting athletes funnel in. There were no spectators allowed in the gym - there were large bay doors that opened up to a caution-tape area filled with chairs and a sprinkler system that misted folks from the Texas heat.
And so it began. Like any other small, local competition, except smaller. And secluded. Athletes each had their own 6 foot square with their own weights and bars. If athletes trained together in the same gym, they were allowed to share a bar, but they were otherwise discouraged from interacting with other athletes.
It was quiet. There was a speaker system, but the bass and vocals echoing throughout the space didn’t seem to liven up the room as much as Sheila Barden (the MC) would have hoped for.
After the 4 sessions of lifters, the gym was restored back to its social-distanced-CrossFit self without a trace of the competition lingering anywhere.
This was huge. This was momentous. This was going to encourage folks to get back to training. This was going to prove that weightlifting can be done safely during these strange times.
This was nothing. And I mean nothing compared to what I was about to witness in Florida.
Saturday and Sunday, August 15th and 16th, 2020. Orlando, Florida.
Florida… is Florida.
Hear me out - it’s great. The weightlifting community in Florida is vast and tight-knit. It is unlike any other LWC or fitness-like community.
It’s purely wild.
I walked into day 1 of the competition with my bag weighing heavy on my shoulders and the oppressive humidity making my mask stick to my face. It was my first travel to a competition since the Arnold Sports Fest that was directly followed by Covid shut downs.
If I’m being honest, I was afraid I had lost my touch with documenting these competitions.
This would also be my first local meet in Florida territory and I had no idea what I was in for.
If you’re in the world of weightlifting and you have walked in the back room of any national competition put on by USAW, you will know what I mean when I say that there is a very good chance that at least 1 weightlifter from every session will have a Floridian.
That may not sound like an impressive statistic, but take into account how many lifters there are per session (generally speaking, anywhere from 8-12). So, typically, at least 1 person from that sample is from Florida. Every session. Of every competition.
What I’m trying to say is that Florida weightlifting is not only vast - it is strong.
And when I was walking in the back room, taking in the sheer amount of lifters, I was beginning to feel as though I was attending a USAW national meet.
So many coaches and athletes I had come to know were in this backroom - friends I hadn’t seen in several months when I was used to seeing them every few weeks. Now, suddenly, all together again.
And it was hopping.
JDoll was pumping the place full of music while the spectator area was completely packed.
Completely packed.
Lifters shared bars and plates and chalk bowls. There were teammates loading for them, cheering for them. There were cards and pens and everything that seemed so normal that had lost its normalcy.
This is 6 months into the pandemic, remember, and this was the most amount of human beings I had seen in any given place in a long time.
And the weightlifters were excited. There was laughter and cheering and it was electric. It was charged with energy that so many folks had lacked from isolation, but had returned, even in this seemingly small way.
Mattie was in the last session. She was meant to be one of the Olympians that we would watch on the television screens as she took the stage in Tokyo. Instead, that weekend, we saw her take the local platform.
She lifted amongst folks just lifting for fun - and she was preparing for an Olympics that no one knew for sure would happen.
There was color, again. There was a reason to prepare for competitions because they were happening.
There was reason to hope for a return to our community on a larger scale.
Nothing was certain then. And now, a year later, it seems like we may find ourselves in uncertainty again, even after we have found our Olympians in Tokyo and being so proud of each of them for lifting us up.
And though there is uncertainty, there is one thing that is for certain:
We’ll keep lifting.
