I Came as a Sidekick

This was supposed to be a straightforward meet recap.

I planned to write the numbers, break down the attempts, note what we learned, and move on. That's usually how these go. But something happened this weekend that I keep coming back to, and it wasn't on the platform.

I walked into that meet and stepped into her world.

Not the other way around. For the first time, I wasn't the person she was orbiting. She had a whole life there — friends she made on her own, a gym she found on her own, a community she built from scratch in a city where she didn't know anyone. I showed up as her coach and found myself as the sidekick. She was mid-conversation with Sean Doyle — literally the strongest man in Washington state, someone I know — and she was just chatting with him like a training buddy. Because he is her training buddy. She built that.

I stood there and watched her beam that smile across the room at people who were genuinely happy to see her, and I thought — she did this herself. All of it.

That's what inspired this. So this turned into something more than a recap. Bear with me.

I am so incredibly proud of this girl.

Roxy started college in January pursuing mechanical engineering with a full math load. New city. New expectations. New gym. New everything. The off season was about training while learning to adapt — and when a local meet became available, she didn't wait for perfect timing. First experience with online coaching. She trained on her own, built her own environment, and when meet day came I was there to coach her through it — stepping into the world she had already created.

Thank you to Saprogenic Strength for welcoming Roxy and Lilli. Community matters. More on that in a moment.

Roxy went 7 for 9.

Before I break down the lifts, I want to talk about how we got here — because the numbers are only part of the story.

Roxy has been competing since she was 17. She is cut from the same cloth as me — she loves people, she loves community, and that smile she shares with an entire room the moment she walks in tells you everything you need to know about who she is. She saw what powerlifting gave me and she wanted in. She chose Dave as her first coach because Dave was my coach. That was her decision. And it was the right one.

At OPS, we believe that long term development isn't just about building a stronger athlete — it's about building a more capable person. We run semi-private group training with two in-house coaches and a strong, years-deep culture of people learning from and alongside one another. The community isn't a bonus feature. It is the foundation. It shapes how athletes receive hard feedback, how they respond to setbacks, and how they show up when nobody is watching. You can't manufacture that. You build it slowly, over time, with the right people in the room.

Roxy grew up inside that culture. When she moved to a new city and found a gym and made friends before she ever stepped on the platform — that wasn't coincidence. That was instinct. She rebuilt the thing she knew worked.

I also made her pay for coaching when she started with Dave.

That was intentional. When she had skin in the game, she showed up differently. Buy-in changes everything — the way you listen, the way you prepare, the way you receive hard feedback. I wanted her to understand the value of the work being done for her before she ever took it for granted. I see that same lesson still being applied today.

At OPS we have a few mantras that live in constant rotation. We use them to recenter athletes, to cut through noise, to remind people why they are there. The most popular: have you tried trying? Followed closely by not with that attitude. And then there is you can do hard things — which carries a little more weight than the others. That one didn't come from a whiteboard. It came from real life. It came from the seasons where things got hard outside the gym and people kept showing up anyway. Prep is twelve weeks on average. A lot can happen in twelve weeks. Jobs change. Relationships shift. People get the flu three weeks out from a meet. Life does not pause for a peak. Learning to train through disruption is not a secondary skill — it is the skill. And it transfers.

That is what powerlifting has given Roxy. Not just strength. A reference point. If I can do these hard things in here, I can handle hard things out there. She knows that now in her bones. You can see it in how she moves through the world.

Attempt Breakdown

Squat. 132 bodyweight. Opened at 225 — already a PR. 248, state record. 259, another state record. Smiling. Calm. Confident. She made a bar position change in the off season and put serious work into this lift. Some preps we pour more love into one lift than another. You can see it here. Three good lifts, all white lights, room left in the tank. 45 pound squat PR. That is not luck. That is preparation meeting opportunity.

Bench is where this meet told its most important story — and it wasn't in the numbers.

Her technique is beautiful. But she missed the start command on her second attempt at 110. As her coach, I had a decision to make. I could have jumped weight. But that risked walking away matching her last bench, when we had a clear path to a 10 pound PR. My job is to build a total. The risk wasn't worth it. We repeated 110.

She knew it wasn't what she wanted to do. And she did it anyway.

That is the lesson. Not the lift — the decision to trust the process even when it isn't comfortable. She was bothered by the miss. You could see it. But instead of distress, there was an "oh shucks" smile. An acknowledgment, not a spiral. She reset and went back up. The lift was grindy. It told us exactly where we are. That is information worth having.

She didn't apply the lesson perfectly. She was still bothered. But she understood it. She stayed inside it. She trusted the call. At 17, that moment might have unraveled a whole session. At 21, it was a speed bump she smiled through — alone, in a new city, with no one in the room to steady her. That is four years of work showing up exactly when it was supposed to.

Deadlift. 259 solid. 281 absolutely smoked. We called 308. In hindsight, 286 sets her up better for that 300+ next meet. But she got the flu three weeks out and it disrupted our peaking singles. Those lifts aren't just stimulus — they're data. Without them, you're deciding with an incomplete picture. We took the swing. It didn't move. Now we know.

She walked off the platform the same person who walked on.

55 pounds added to her total. 10 pounds lighter than her last meet.

New school. Hard major. New city. New gym. Online coaching. Quick peak. Flu three weeks out.

And still. Growth.

Here is what I know about developing a young athlete over time: you are not just building a lifter. You are building a person. Every hard conversation, every consequence I let her face, every time I made her earn something she could have been handed — that was the curriculum. Powerlifting was the vehicle. The real lessons were accountability, ownership, and the lived understanding that discomfort is not a signal to stop.

She is in hard mode now. College is hard mode. A demanding major in a new city with no built-in support system is hard mode. And she is doing it — not because it came easy, but because she has spent four years building the evidence that she can.

You can do hard things. She doesn't just believe that anymore. She has proven it. In the gym, on the platform, and now in the life she is building entirely on her own terms.

This meet is a time stamp. Not a finish line. It documents maturity. Ownership. Courage. A work ethic that doesn't need an audience. Confidence catching up to capability. A young woman who trusted her coach's call even when it wasn't the call she wanted — and who smiled through a setback that used to swallow her whole.

I am proud of her performance. But more, I am proud of the woman she is becoming.

As her coach, I see an athlete who is starting to understand herself.

As her parent, I see the work paying off.

Those are not the same feeling. But this meet, they arrived together.