Weightlifting team triumphs at provincial competition

University of Toronto Mississauga's weightlifting team recently earned the top post-secondary team honour - the Craig Williamson Memorial Award - at the Ontario Scholastics competition in North Bay on April 2, 2011.

Student athletes Jae Yun, Mathew Morgan, Rex Liu, Brett Payne, Fahim Rahman and Richard Gonsalves represented U of T Mississauga, bringing home one gold, two silver and a bronze.

Andrew Bellerby, fitness program coordinator at the Recreation, Athletic and Wellness Centre (RAWC), attributes the team's strong performance to several factors: High-level coaching with Steve Sandor, our facilities (High Performance Centre) with eight Olympic lifting platforms, a competitive environment with national team members training at our facility, and strong student representation this year with a number of new members recently joining the program.

Gonsalves, a third-year student in French and Crime, Law & Deviance, was the best male lifter, achieving two personal bests - 120 kilos in the snatch and 153 kilos in the clean and jerk. (With the snatch, the lifter picks up the weight quickly, bouncing it off the hip and throwing it over head. With the clean and jerk, the lifter bounces the weight off of the thighs, catches it on the shoulders, and stands up to pop the weight above the head.)

As a result, Gonsalves will be competing at the Canadian senior weightlifting championships on May 21, 2011 in Toronto. If he places in the top three, he will advance to his first international competition, the World University Weightlifting Championships.

Gonsalves says that while his eventual goal is to contend for the 2016 Olympic Games, his immediate goal is to continue balancing full-time studies with a rigorous training schedule and his job at the RAWC.

School, work and training is all at UTM so that helps. UTM really encourages me and promotes me too, which helps a lot, says Gonsalves, who is also sponsored by inbalance nutrition. They do help me a ton financially and provide my supplements. They also identify with me being a student athlete in that I don't have a lot of time.

Gonsalves was first introduced to weightlifting by a friend as a way to cross-train and picked up on it very quickly. He is now doing the same for others who might have what it takes to be a weight lifter.
Richard is a staff member (personal trainer) at the RAWC and has been scheduled in the High Performance Centre to help introduce new students to the program, Bellerby says. He is an excellent role model and has inspired many new students to take up the sport.

Not only is the U of T Mississauga weightlifting program hoping to bring more students-- particularly females--to the sport, Bellerby says they plan to certify more coaches, accredit members as referees so the campus can host regular competitions, and organize programs to introduce weightlifting to younger students in high school.

With all of these efforts we hope to see our program continue to grow and become the largest and most successful program in Canada, Bellerby says.