New powerlifting team carries weight of opportunities, growth for student athletes
A new West team is ready to help do the 'heavy lifting' and provide students with more opportunities to build strength, boost confidence, and build community. The powerlifting team is open to anyone interested in pushing their athletic abilities to the next level.
Head coach Alex Del Vecchio is excited to bring the new opportunity.
“Myself and our diverse and talented coaching staff are extremely excited to be bringing a new sporting opportunity to the West athletes,” he said. “We believe it gives numerous people the ability to explore a new horizon in sports; to push themselves to the next level.”
He is prepared to bring this program into West and confident that it can get people into a whole new level of sports opportunities. Sophomore Dylan Muellenbach is excited..
“I think it’s a great opportunity for students who don’t have a winter sport to build strength,” he said. “When you look at our football team, we are generally smaller than other school’s players. I think it is an opportunity to get stronger, bigger, and put effort into the offseason.”
Del Vecchio knows there are some stereotypes that need to be overcome.
“There are a lot of misconceptions about powerlifting, like you have to be the biggest, strongest, and fittest person on the platform and that’s not the case,” he said. “Powerlifting has over 10 weight classes and two sets of age groups for each gender in high school competition, allowing everyone no matter their age, skill or abilities to get started in the sport and grow.”
Del Vecchio desires to create an inclusive environment.
“Wisconsin has the most powerlifters and powerlifting teams in the country per capita,” he said “We want Oshkosh to be known as a powerhouse among those. Currently Neenah is number two and Elk Mound is number three in the country coming out of high school nationals last year in Louisiana.”
The team’s practice regimen is structured and challenging, according to Wildcat assistant football coach Adam Stuiber.
“Monday is bench, Tuesday squat, Wednesday they have the choice to be an off day or they can choose to do some auxiliaries, then Thursday will be deadlift,” he said. “Auxiliary lifts will be based on percentages pertaining to powerlifting. When working towards competition, we will start to offload the weights off the bar, giving the body time to rest, relax, and recover for the competition.”
Stuiber preaches the fundamentals of being a good and driven powerlifter.
“Good attitude, you can control your effort and your attitude,” he said. “That’s the two things you can control. We all make mistakes and have a good positive attitude about it to make those mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and get better from them.”
A student planning on joining the powerlifting team, senior Omer Camlibel, enjoys the challenge.
“I had friends that lifted before and I got into lifting from the encouragement of them, and I really liked the personal growth and the challenges that powerlifting offered and it got me interested,” he said.
The powerlifting team hopes that they can inspire individuals to go out for the team, from spending quality time with friends or experiencing physical and mental growth. Del Vecchio has long term goals for the program and how it hopes to help athletes who participate in it.
“Our goal is to provide a positive, powerful program where lifters can grow physically and mentally,” he said. “Students can learn how to push themselves through adversity or failure.”
by Mark Jung
Published November 4th, 2024
Oshkosh West Index Volume 121 Issue II