Foundation girls weightlifting sets bar high for new season

Foundation Academy’s girls weightlifting team is heading into its third year and has started the season with some positive results. 

After a year of virtual meets and home meets in 2020-21, the team is back to a normal schedule; it competed at the Leesburg High Invitational Nov. 19. The team had two girls finish in the top 10 in their respective weight classes.

Head coach Christy Thompson has seen her squad double in size since the program started in 2019. The team now has fourteen members and a district champion in 2020 in Rylie Winters. Senior lifter Taylor Clayton took second at the Class 1A, District 10 competition behind Winters.   

Thompson said she’s seeing much more growth in her athletes this season. 

“Our message and the spirit of what weightlifting is and can be has permeated to the students and other athletes,” Thompson said. “We make a point to encourage the girls to be supportive of each other. The environment they have created … has carried out to other girls.” 

As the strength and conditioning coach at Foundation, Thompson seemed like a natural fit for the team when it launched in 2019. But weightlifting is a winter sport and coincided with the basketball season, for which Thompson served as head coach at the time. 

“I had to make a choice,” Thompson said. “It made sense as being the strength and conditioning coach to be there for these girls and to start this new program the right way. I got it off going in the right direction, so it was important at the time to do that.” 

Since then, she has not looked back. Adjusting to the new sport gave her a different perspective on what can constitute success besides the usual wins and losses. 

“It’s different from any other sport in that you can technically lose the meet by points, but you can still come out with so many different victories,” Thompson said. “There is breaking personal records and people placing in their weight class. There is always something positive to take away from every opportunity. We have little successes, but I don’t put pressure on them.” 

Thompson said she enjoyed seeing the way her young athletes grow in self-confidence and how that affects other parts of their lives.

“Seeing them progress in that they are timid at first when they come in — not sure if they are going to do well — but then seeing them progress week to week and get stronger … you see their confidence grow,” Thompson said. “As a female myself, they need that confidence for life. Weightlifting is something that brings that out of them.” 

She also hopes her team’s success can help change others’ perceptions of female weightlifters.

“Fitness for life,” Thompson said. “We need exercisers for life — people to be healthy and fit. I want to break the cycle of, ‘If I get the gym, I’ll get big and bulky.’ I want to break that myth. Whether they win titles or not, I want (the athletes) to be comfortable in their own skin. I want them to walk into an LA Fitness or the YMCA and feel comfortable and confident in going in to life some weights.”