Happy New Year everyone!
I hope it’s been great so far! First, I want to congratulate everyone who qualified for the American open finals and give a special congratulations to these winning athletes! They are Jerome Smith, Shacasia Johnson, Marissa Klingseis and Ethan Harak! Also wanted to congratulate Janelle Shafer for taking second place in the 5th Annual Qatar Cup located in Doha Qatar!
This year to come we have some exciting new things happening! Make sure you keep up-to-date with the website or Facebook page. One thing I can tell you about right now as we will be having our own team wherever possible at major national events. The first time this will happen will be the youth Nationals. We are currently looking for name ideas. So if you have something please email or go to Facebook and let us know! I am sure there will be many questions about who will make the team’s and such. We will be detailing all of that in our next board meeting later this month. As soon as that is finalized, we will have a document out to you all.
I am looking forward to a fun 2019! See y’all soon!
Anna Martin,
Head Coach, KC Weightlifting
President, Missouri Valley Weightlifting Assoc.
Athletes and Coaches,
Anna and I were able to get together briefly last week to discuss some of the plans for this year and to get the ball rolling on a few. There is a lot on the plate and we are excited about it!
One of our main goals for the year is to organize a Missouri Valley Youth Training Camp later in the summer. We are currently reaching out to some of the top coaches in the country and looking into various venues in the area to host. We are hoping to be able to hold this even towards the end of July. We are also planning to hold the 2018 Missouri Valley awards banquet at the conclusion of this camp.
We also discussed two of the new rule changes in the IWF rule book and how it will affect our local meets. The first is the challenge card rule. This rule will not be used at local meets since we do not have the technology to back it up, nor do we want our meet sessions to last three hours. Secondly is the new rule that does not allow the athlete to touch the competition bar with the feet. This is a rule that we will move towards enforcing, not because we love it, but because we want to keep our meets running as close to the national and international meets as possible. The Missouri Valley has always had high standards for how the local meets are run and we intend to maintain that. For now, warnings will be issued as a reminder, and then red-lighted on the second offense. Eventually, it will become a regularly enforced rule in our local meets.
Anna Martin and KC Weightlifting have the distinct honor of instructing and hosting the Women Coaching Education Weekend, January 18-20, to help promote women as coaches in USAW. The link for registration can be found on the USAW website.
It’s been a growing trend over the last few years for teams to organize “all-star” teams or LWC teams for the National meets that don’t necessarily train together for the same gym or coaches. In order to compete with this at the national level, we are planning on organizing our own Missouri Valley all-star teams in the future for Youth, Junior, and Senior Nationals. We need your help naming this team. Last Wednesday I posted about this on the MVWA facebook page. You can post your suggestions there or feel free to reach out to the board members. In a future board meeting, we will discuss the suggestions and choose the name that will represent our team.
Also, a quick reminder of our new Missouri Valley Weightlifting Assoc. website created by our very own Elisha Hess. She did an outstanding job and you can find all kinds of great information about what’s happening in the Missouri Valley at missourivalleyweightlifting.org. You will also find meet results as well as updated records on the website. Help us out when your lifters break or set a new record by reaching out to Elisha and letting her know so that it doesn’t get overlooked.
We’re very excited for 2019 and look forward to seeing all of you and growing in strength together!
Brad Jonker
Head Coach, Lion Chaser Barbell
VP, Missouri Valley Weightlifting Assoc.