Texas State Championship Summary

The Texas State Championships and Open is complete. I believe this to be one of the most well-run and complication-free meets I’ve ever been involved in. With 239 lifters competing, this meet went off without a hitch! Well done! On day two, our lifters continued the trend from day one and outperformed even our coach’s expectations of them. Robert and William both hit massive PR’s and Robert especially outperformed his performance at this same meet last year. I also need to give a shout out to Josh Mahon who PR’d simply by stepping on the platform this year. At this meet 365 days ago he ended up in the hospital with fractured vertebrae. His come back over the past year has been noteworthy, and considering the current circumstances, certainly brings hope.
I did fairly well considering all that was going on around me, and felt pretty good about my last clean and jerk especially. I managed to walk away with the best male open lifter and feel very good about that.
Unfortunately, I did not win the best male lifter, nor did our teams win any team awards because of the scoring. The scoring was set up to allow Masters lifters and Youth lifters, who had little to no competition, to score as many points as Open lifters, who had the bulk of the competition. Even the best male/female lifter formula used age adjusted formulas making the top 3 male lifters all masters lifters. This is abnormal for team awards and best lifter awards as it seemed the oldest teams actually turned out to be the best teams fit for winning. I recognize that this was decided and voted on ahead of time. However, it did shake down that the Masters dominant teams won all the awards, hardware, and cash while the truly dominant Senior teams were less fortunate. Poor scoring setup in my opinion that allowed a 55 year old Masters male who was the only one in his weight class to score as many team points as a 20 year old male who had to jump 10 kg from his best PR to win first. Seems a little out of order in my opinion.
nNonetheless, lifters lifted, totals were made, and I could not be happier with how Deep Barbell members performed. Luckily, we did walk away with some hardware. Overall this was an exceptional meet and one that I will be proud of for years to come. Thanks again coaches and athletes for exceeding my expectations and performing on the platform. Thanks again North Texas Weightlifting Committee for helping put on a top-notch event. Here’s to next year!