This year's nationals was a wildly new experience for me. I want to take a second and summarize some things that happened this year in both my own lifting as well as team Power and Grace.
Disclaimer: I absolutely despise excuses. Few things get under my skin more than reading people's Instagram or Twitter after National meets. Especially when they don't do well. Everybody's got an excuse and everybody has a reason for why they did not do well. What gets under my skin is had they done well that excuse would've never existed. Excuses don't come to fruition when you don't reach your goals. You either excel, despite the circumstances, or you don't. Excuses are just a copout. Also, inconsistent judging falls into the category of excuses. Blog to come on this later…
The reason I say what I did about excuses because I could make a long list of them for this Nationals. The reality is though that I knew what the struggle that would be before walking into this year's Nationals and I knew going in that it would likely impact my performance. However, because I love the thrill of the competition platform and I love lifting weights, I chose to compete anyways. This is my first year coaching more than just a single athlete while at the same time trying to compete personally. The past two years I have had the distinct pleasure of coaching Sarabeth Phillips to two separate podiums. This year, in Power and Grace's first National team appearance, I got to coach eight athletes. Seven of which lifted before my session. Everyone warned me and advised against trying to be both coach and athlete and while I knew it would impact my performance I wanted to do both.
What I was not prepared for was how hard it would be to swallow that performance. I had just come off a 5 for 6 performance at the Regionals and a 290 PR total. I remember what that felt like and I remember all of my training coming together to produce such an awesome result. Only a couple months later I struggled to go 2 for 6 and finish 20 kg lighter than that performance. Regardless of the reasoning, that was a massive disappointment. It was a massive disappointment to myself and it hurt our team points. Even matching the 290 total would have landed me 4th instead of 13th. A 9 point difference in points. This reality has to be solved if I'm every going to be competitive at the National level.
While my lifting may have been a mess, the team did exceptionally well. I could not be more proud of the effort and endurance our team showed in their training leading up to Nationals and their performance on the platform. Some of the highlights of the weekend included Meghan Valentine's much improved jerk, Cici's bronze medal total in her first National meet, Sarabeth's PR total and valient attempt at the podium, Caitlin's clutch total despite a battle with the flu, Cherisse standing up a PR 93 clean, Jilly coming through on a third attempt snatch at 75kg, and Kevin's beautiful final clean and jerk at 157. We finished in 6th place as a team which is outstanding for a team where 4 out of 6 were at their first National Championship. I am extremely excited for the future of each of these lifters and for our team. We will be back next year. Until then it's back to the squat rack.
On a sidenote, if you know Phil Andrews, Melissa Knourek, Bobby Sirkis, anyone who volunteered all weekend or are on the USAW Staff congratulate them. The meet was well put together, the warmup room immaculate, the venue was perfect, and the meet was run incredibly well. USAW has clearly made it a priority to ensure that our National events are well-run and worth attending.