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Lexington Powerlifting Meet

December 18, 2023

Niobrara-Verdigre Powerlifters bring home hardware from the Lexington Powerlifting Meet…

The powerlifting season officially kicked off this past week when twenty-three lifters from the Niobrara-Verdigre powerlifting team traveled to Lexington Saturday, December 16^th for the Lexington Powerlifting Meet.  It was a huge meet (290 lifters!) with a line-up of very stiff competition.  It was great to see the big school competition while setting some good marks to gauge ourselves on the upcoming season.  After all the dust settled, the Cougars came home with a 3^rd place trophy!  We can be proud of the manner in which our students represented our schools and communities.  The kids are working hard, encouraging each other, and setting goals that will drive their performance this season.

Top 9 final team standings...

Co-ed:  1^st place Lexington (85 pts); 2^nd Columbus (50); 3^rd Niobrara-Verdigre (45); 4^th Grand Island (44); 5^th Crete (43); 6^th North Platte (40); 7^th McCook (23); 8^th Centura (20); 9^th Seward (10).

Girls:  1^st place Lexington (61 pts); 2^nd Grand Island (46); 3^rd Columbus (41); 4^th Niobrara-Verdigre (33); 5^th North Platte (28); 6^th Crete (16); 7^th (tie) Seward (5), Centura (5); 9^th McCook (0).

Boys:  1^st place Lexington (79 pts); 2^nd Crete (38); 3^rd Grand Island (28); 4^th McCook (23); 5^th North Platte (22); 6^th Columbus (20); 7^th Niobrara-Verdigre (18); 8^th Centura (15); 9^th Seward (5).

With so many lifters competing, all of the weight classes had a very large number of contestants.  This meant that medaling, or even finishing in the top half of your weight class, was a huge accomplishment!

We had no individual gold medal winners for a 3-lift total, but Emmarie Pavlik (148 lb) earned 1^st place honors in her weight class for bench press.  Silver medalists were Alex Motacek (114 lb class), Taylor Pavlik (181 lb class), and Raquel Morales-Montalvo (198+ lb class).  Landyn Frank (123 lb class), Melody Bonham (114 lb class), Aliyah Yunker (181 lb class), and RaeLynne Nelson (198 lb class) were bronze medalists .

Other medal winners… Isaac Pavlik 4^th place (220 lb class); Lorenzo Denny 4^th place (275+ lb class); Christine Mechaley 4^th place (97 lb class), and Miranda Stohlmann 5^th place (165 lb class).  Lillian Swoboda (198+ lb class) just missed a medal finishing in 6^th place.  Westin Bauer (165 lb class), Arlan Lammers (165 lb class), and Jacob Motacek (181 lb class) each totaled over 800 lbs but just missed out on medaling in their respective weight classes.  Our other lifters who competed in extremely deep and difficult weight classes were Wyatt Shabram (148 lb class), Izaak Vakoc (181 lb class), Reid Teadtke (181 lb class), Gwen Bonham (105 lb class), Kami Simons (148 lb class), Heidi Hollmann (148 lb class), and Amaryah Block (165 lb class).  All lifters set personal bests!

The next powerlifting meet on the schedule for Niobrara-Verdigre will be the Capital City Clash at Parkview Christian in Lincoln on January 20^th.  Looking ahead… We have a powerlifting dual meet vs. North Platte High School at North Platte February 3^rd.  The Verdigre Powerlifting Meet is February 24^th.  The Class D state powerlifting meet is March 23^rd at Harvard High School.  Then the Orchard AAU Powerlifting Meet is a National meet this year and will be a 2-day event Friday & Saturday, April 5^th & 6^th.  GO COUGARS!