Cortland Fitness hosts a Powerlifting competition for students looking to show their dedication and strength in their fitness training reaching PRs over 700 lbs.
On April 24, the student life center sectioned off the main platform to watch the male and female competitors push their limits to earn the strongest male and female awards. The crowd was excited and the judges were ready to see some PRs reached. The three events in powerlifting: squat, bench press, and deadlift are used to evaluate individuals’ overall strength. This is the second meet following the COVID-19 pandemic and the Student Life Center was hoping for a smooth meet and packed crowd.
There were two groups, group A and group B. In group A’s attempts, there were many successful lifts including last year’s strong woman Samantha Mckay reaching 290 lbs on her third attempt and Nathan Vivelo pushing 475 lbs despite not being a powerlifter. In group B’s attempts, we saw even higher numbers achieved from many competitors including Leo Rabinovich, also known as the Russian Nightmare for his insanely impressive PRs across all events. Leo was last up to compete in group B and he made 675 lbs look light when he completed his third attempt successfully. Another competitor that reached a PR was Antonio’s Marrero squatting 510 lbs.
Moving to the next event, it was time to bench press and again some impressive achievements across both groups. Following the commands of the judges, Samantha Mckay was successful in her third attempt. She was the only female to complete three attempts and Ryan Harris pushed an impressive 260 lbs getting home closer to a PR. In group B, again Antonio Marrero hit a PR of 320 lbs showing his hard work leading up to the competition. Closing the bench press event in the competition, Leo Rabinovich had another successful round three attempt making 415 lbs look easy and blowing the crowd away.
The final event of the competition was a deadlift and this is where the energy of the crowd was high cameras were on, and competitors were locked in. Group A had many successful competitors hitting all three attempts including, Autumn Stoia, Morgan Spencer, Nicholas Moran Torrevlanca, Samantha Mckay, Jeremiah Van Leuven, and Eric Oh who reached a PR of more than 2x his body weight of 480 lbs. Onto group B there were several PRs from Kyle Paracla lifting 575 lbs and Antonio Marrero lifting a whopping 700 lbs making his fans, coaches and judges cheer at his successful lift. Last up again was Leo Rabinovich and this was the event he was known for. Given that the bar used in this event was Leo’s, it was known he was about to show off his strength once again. Following a mishap with loading, Leo lost his grip in his third attempt at 725 lbs. Leo and his coach discussed it with the judges and he wasn’t ready to accept the ending of the competition. The bar was loaded up and this time he was going for 735 lbs. He succeeded once again ending off the competition with a never-before-seen lift at Cortland.
After the calculations of each competitor’s scores, the judges and meet advisor Kate Jenson calculated who lifted the most lbs per lb of body weight. The results came to Samantha Mckay with Strongest Women for the second year in a row lifting 5.35 lbs times her body weight totaling 765 lbs lifted in the meet and Strongest Man was awarded to Matthew Lee for lifting 8.97 times his body weight totaling 1335 pounds in the competition.
This meet would not have been possible without the work of the Cortland Recreational Sports Fitness program giving credit to Graduate Assistants Kate Jenson and Makayla Ferguson who organized and successfully ran this meet bringing their love of fitness competition into the lives of Cortland students. Recreational Sports staff and powerlifting competitors alongside the fans in the crowd are excited to see the competitors train for the following year and show off their improvements at our next competition hoping to see some new faces as well.