Being on the football team comes with its fair share of requirements. Players need to take three sports: football, track, and either powerlifting or wrestling. Many of the football players challenge themselves by taking powerlifting.
“Powerlifting is a sport that I use to maximize my abilities in football to get stronger with power and explosion and stuff like that,” junior Zach Velasquez said. “You compete against guys in your weight division.”
Many of the lifters have noticed that powerlifting is beneficial to their football skills.

 
“I’m a center so my position in football requires me to be pretty strong, and powerlifting really helps me out with that,” junior Antonio Tovar said.

 
The guys start lifting during their football period at the end of the day and carry on until after school. All that practice tends to get very tiring to some of the football playing lifters.
“It puts quite a bit of strain on the body. For one week I was just so tired because we always practice and we lift pretty heavy,”  Tovar said.

 
But all that practice is necessary for all the competitions and meets they participate in.
“We usually go to tournaments where there’ll be like 10 different schools and sometimes we go to competitions with just us against another school,” Velasquez said. “The one meet that we go to every year is Vista Ridge and it’s pretty competitive.”

 
In January the team won the Vista Ridge competition by one point. Velasquez earned first place and Tovar followed up in second place. Despite the victory, Tovar doesn’t find Vista Ridge to be the toughest meet.
“The Dell Valley meet is pretty hard; I think that’s probably the toughest one because they have officials from UT judge,” Tovar said

 
Being on the powerlifting team helps the guys set and achieve goals.
“My goal was to reach the 1000 club and I reached it,” Velasquez said. “Powerlifting has made me stronger and faster.”
The chemistry built among the teammates through all the practices and meets also helps the team with what their main sport: football.

 
“The meets usually last about like four or five hours so we get a good amount of time to hang out with each other,” Tovar said. “We all play football so we already know each other so we kind of just tease each other if we don’t get a lift or something.”

 
The lifters enjoy doing what they do despite the price they have to pay.

 
“It’s a whole new experience,” Tovar said. “It’s actually pretty fun even though it hurts.”