Why I Love Weightlifting Part 5: Building a Team

When I first started weightlifting in 2001, my goal was simple: I wanted to become a great lifter. But as I’ve detailed in earlier posts in this series, fate had other plans. Before long, I found myself stepping into the role of a coach.

As a competitor, I lifted as part of Team Houston, thanks to my dad’s friendship with coach Tim Swords. During those early years as a branch of Team Houston, our group produced two Youth Pan-Am Team members, and our lifters won multiple School-Age National Championships (now known as Youth Nationals).

As my dad continued to grow his roster—and I gradually took on most of the coaching duties—we made the decision to branch off and form our own team. Sandusky Weightlifting was officially established in 2008.

We had essentially been functioning as our own team for some time, but formalizing it gave us a distinct identity and a strong roster of talented youth lifters. One of those early athletes, Kody, whose father, Rick, was one of the wrestling coaches at the school where we trained. Rick quickly became an indispensable part of the team.

While my dad and I handled the programming and coaching, Rick was the one actively recruiting new talent. But his recruiting wasn’t random—he had a keen eye for identifying not just physical ability but also the mental toughness and persistence required to succeed in weightlifting. That gave us a huge advantage. Starting with the right athletes meant we could train more intensely and focus on progress rather than constantly patching weaknesses.

In 2008, I came up with the idea of “Weightlifting Season.” We hosted six local meets spaced two weeks apart, held in the wrestling room attached to the weight room. The season ran from April through August, culminating in the AAU Junior Olympics. Thanks to Rick’s recruiting efforts, our team began to make a name for itself on the national stage.

The following year, after our second “Weightlifting Season,” we attended our first USA School-Age Nationals. With just seven lifters entered, we brought home three silver medals, one bronze, and finished third overall in the team competition. That same year, we hosted the Ohio Weightlifting Championships in the high school’s multi-purpose room, attracting 100 lifters—an impressive number for the time.

The next year marked our third “Weightlifting Season,” and the team continued to shine. We produced three national champions and one bronze medalist, and one of our lifters made multiple attempts at the American Record in the clean and jerk. We ended the year by hosting the Ohio Championships once again.

As a coach, I was living the dream—a strong roster, an effective recruiter, a full season dedicated to the sport, and a solid community built around the sport. Everything was going right.

Unfortunately, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. After 2010, the team began to unravel. There were many reasons—my own inexperience in managing a team and its many personalities chief among them. We kept going for another two years, hosting one final Ohio Weightlifting Championships in 2012, but by then most of the original team had moved on and “Weightlifting Season” was no more.

I considered continuing as a full-time strength coach at the high school and did so for another year, but something was missing. The fire that had driven me as a weightlifting coach had dimmed. People always told me that life would eventually take over—I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.