At the beginning of the semester, Tanéya Williams ’26 expressed her desire to begin a weightlifting club. Williams and I share a strong love for the sport, so I made the easy decision to work together with her, thus making me, Maia Wahlquist ’25, the vice president.  

Tanéya got into weightlifting before her first year of college after her mom developed a disability. She wanted to make moving in easier for her and would do all of the heavy lifting so that her mother would hardly lift a finger.   

I first started weightlifting after a major surgery, and I regained my strength through sports rehabilitation instead of physical therapy. In my experience, sports rehabilitation was more centered around recovery through more intense and accelerated exercise. I was taught proper lifting techniques, and since then, I haven’t stopped lifting.  

The primary goal of this club is to share our love for weightlifting with as many people as possible. We want to encourage and support those who are interested in learning how to weightlift in hopes that they can feel comfortable going to the gym to train. We will provide beginners with the opportunity to participate in weightlifting workouts while learning from us and other members of our club. We will place a focus on ensuring that our club will act as a safe space for those just starting out. We will always empower all of our members, and we will make inclusivity a priority.   

So much time and effort has been put into this club, and we want to see it thriving with as many members as possible, each bringing their amazing selves to our events and gym sessions. We have infinitely many goals for this club, and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to fulfill them! Our signup sheet at the club fair was filled front and back with names. The support and success we found while tabling at the fair was amazing, and it most definitely was encouraging to see the amount of interest people had in our club. We are super excited to be part of the start of someone’s weightlifting journey and to be able to watch our experienced lifters hit new personal records. St. Lawrence Universities Weightlifting Club welcomes anyone and everyone with open arms.