The Blue and White interviewed Coach Rolson the football and weightlifting coach for his input on our weightlifting team this year. Weightlifting has made some big accomplishments this year in the metro, olympic (which is a type of weightlifting), clean and jerk, and more thanks to some astounding athletes.

Coach Rolson told us the reason why he chose to coach weightlifting, “It kind of goes hand in hand with football for us. You know, a lot of the training we do for football is weight training and our football kids lift weights year round so it kind of lends itself to that’s the majority of your weightlifting team. [Therefore] you might as well coach them. So you know the most about it. It’s just an easy transition.”

Coach Rolson explains what competitions they’ve won and competed in this year. “We had four or five competitions before Metro which is district and region we won all of those. There’s traditional, which is bench and clean and jerk.”

“Clean and jerk,” is a combination of two weightlifting movements. You start with picking up the bar and holding it over your shoulders, but before putting it down you hold it above your head for a few seconds. It requires a lot of back and shoulder motor skills. This differs from a snatch where you use momentum to hold the bar over your head in a crouching position.

Coach Roslon then mentions the Olympic competitions, “Olympic which is clean and jerk, and then snatch, we finished second and won and third in the other and Metro. We won the district in the Olympics which is a nice accomplishment and region. We had two young men Tai Ray, and Kevin Roberts, qualify for the state championship.”

The Blue and White interviewed Antonio Ferguson a senior weightlifter and football athlete, “I started weightlifting because in order to be the best football player I can be I must lift weights to become stronger and faster. Some challenges of lifting weights is that even though there are benefits to lifting weights there are also negatives, such as getting injuries that can set you back in your progress.”

Ferguson would have qualified for state, but hurt his hamstrings and couldn’t lift. Unfortunate things like these are what you have to look out for and are sadly unpredictable. Ferguson then goes on to say, “I plan to continue weightlifting in my college career but not on a team because I will be focused on my dream of making it to the NFL. My favorite thing about weightlifting is that the more hard work you put in the more results you will see. The weightlifting season has been great and I have placed first place in every meet I’ve attended.”

The Blue and White also interviewed Isaac Knight, a senior weightlifter that qualified for regionals, “I like competitions so I have a lot of fun going to different cities and schools like that. It’s been going good, I won metros and placed top three in the district so I made the regionals. Stay consistent once you get on the team and start lifting make sure you don’t skip days or skip workouts, stay consistent the whole time so you can continue to get stronger.”

Seems like weightlifting has had a pretty promising and rewarding year this year.