I started my athletic life as a Nordic skier when I was 5. I also started playing lacrosse around that time. I started competing in Nordic ski racing at 15 and was able to compete at junior nationals in 2015 and 2016. I played competitive lacrosse through college, playing 5 years at RPI and was a two year captain. After finishing skiing at the end of high school, I found CrossFit as a way to get in shape for college lacrosse. I instantley fell in love with crossfit and was at the gym 6 days a week for multiplel hours working out. I then realized that the weightlifting movements were my favorite parts of CrossFit. This lead me to doing exclusively Olympic weightlifting as a sport. Once in college I fell in love with the sport and trained continually through my career. During this time, I competed in multiple local meets, qualified for Junior Nationals, and competed in University Nationals in 2020.
Towards the end of my college career I decided to commit myself to the sport of Olympic weightlifting. I would take time off from training to play lacrosse in the spring and I was excited to fully commit myself to weightlifting after I was done with lacrosse. I realized that while playing lacrosse I relied too much on my natural athleticism and skill. I could not do this with weightlifting, I would need to put in very focused work day in and day out. Weightlifting is a sport that takes a lot of determination and patience. This is something that was hard for me to swallow but is the reason the sport is so rewarding.
As a coach, my goal is to assist athletes in finding a love for weightlifting like I did. This can be setting PR's or just learning to move better. Experiencing both of these things make the time put into the sport worth it. As well as being extremely rewarding from a coaching perspective.
