Thursday, January 14th. San Antonio, Texas.
It had been a while.
That’s not saying much in the times of the Virus. Really, any stretch of time felt like it was far more expansive than it truly would transpire.
Still, the last weightlifting meet with this many participants was in Florida at their own state meet back in October of 2020. And while that meet was well run with precautions and making sure it was a safe, controlled environment, Texas did it differently.
Or, I should say, Bobby did it differently.
We are all used to being in convention halls. That’s not new; having space to breathe? That - that was different.
Stepping into the venue, the conceptual framework Bobby had told me about - two competition platforms facing a wall on either side of the vast room with an L of warm-up platforms behind them, taking up every square inch of the space - was unfolding.
My eyes immediately drifted to Buster. His daunting figure was stomping across the room, carrying a few plates in his arms. He was a sort of strong that could be characterized as “old-man strength”, though he certainly wasn’t close to sitting on porches, whiskey in hand talking about the good ol’ days. Maybe the whiskey. Definitely the whiskey. And some fine wine.
He was a weightlifter - a damn good one, at that. He reminisced with me about his time in the OTC and his fight for international teams.
Since those times of competing at a smaller weight class, he has become more like a rhino in his strength and presence. Someone you certainly would want to be on the good side of, which was not at all hard to do.
He spends his days with a day job, but also being on the sales end of Tru Athletics, an equipment company birthed from Jason Poeth. And he does it well.
He smiles seeing me, dropping the weights down and embracing me. It had been since Florida state that I had seen him and the time apart only allowed for an aggregate of stories to share. But before we could begin those tales, Bobby Sirkis was ready to fill us in on how things would go down - how this intricate, giant meet would actually happen.
We stood in front of what would serve as the men’s platform. A group of volunteers from a local club was assembling the platform and backdrop, which had a picture of Bobby’s athlete, Caitlin, extending into a snatch.
“We’re gonna have to fix that,” Buster said, pointing at the brand of the bumpers being used in the photo.
“That’s what he’s here for,” Bobby chuckles, pointing at me.
Bobby walks us through the structure of the sessions; the number of competitors, the procedures, the small things that no one but a meet coordinator would have their mind on.
Clockwork, I think but don’t say. Bobby had a way with logic that I couldn’t really wrap my mind around - solutions to problems I wouldn’t even recognize existing. There was no doubt that the weekend would go off without a hitch.
I stuck around for a short while longer, but glancing at my watch, I knew that time would be short. Adam and I would have to leave for the venue well before the sun was hoping to rise.
Friday, January 15th.
It isn’t often that a meet coordinator is also competing.
So infrequent, in fact, that I thought Bobby was joking when he said he forgot his singlet.
He wasn’t.
You couldn’t see it at the time while he made his way to his warm up platform, as he was still donning the same Big D Barbell T-shirt and shorts he wore all morning, but there was a bear head on the center of his chest; the logo for a local club he borrowed the singlet from. He nods at me as he passes and sets up shop, tying his shoes while Caitlin stands by.
This was the moment it fully set in that he wasn’t kidding.
“You gotta have two pairs,” he says as I squat on the corner of his platform, taking note in my book and zipping it back into my pack. “You gotta have fresh ones for competition”, he sets the velcro in place across the top of his laces. They were white shoes and they were evidently “fresh” without a scuff on them.
“How do you feel about this, coach?” I look to Caitlin who has her arms crossed, seemingly to look professional. It was working.
Caitlin is Bobby’s athlete, but the roles are reversed for this session. During the meet, each athlete was granted one person to have in the back with them as a coach. While a few strayed from this rule, it was largely adhered to and made for the most open, breathable back room I had ever been in. For Bobby, Caitlin was that coach.
“Whatever you gotta do,” she shrugs, chewing on her gum; something I learn is omnipresent in her life, even while she is actively competing.
She paces over to the screens to count out how many attempts until Bobby would be able to touch the bar. Bobby reclined in his chair, taking a sigh. It had been a long couple of weeks leading up to the meet as a coordinator and now he had to pretend all of that stress and wear hadn’t happened.
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As it turns out, stress doesn’t necessarily equate to poor performance. Bobby battled it out with one other lifter in his session and he came out on top.
His celebration was short lived, though, as the day was far from over. Caitlin retired from her post of coach to relax and prepare herself for her own competition the next day while Bobby reengaged with the competition as the person running the show.
Of course, the rest of the day ran as smoothly as the start of the 14 hour interval spent in the venue. Not only was it seamless and safe - it was beautiful. The same software that was used to dictate national level meets kept the competition in sync. The platforms were all holding up, for the most part; save the couple that had begun to warp. The bars and bumpers were all the same - it felt like home. It felt like, although there were no spectators, we were as close to “normal” as we could have been in the midst of a pandemic.
Saturday, January 16th.
Caitlin was doing her makeup.
This, I suppose, was a ritual reserved for competition; the applying of mascara and other products I wouldn’t be able to name. Bobby laughs, taking a photo of the occasion. Caitlin only shrugs, smiling.
Where Bobby was a mostly quiet competitor (save the moments just before he steps on stage when he has inexplicable bouts of gas), Caitlin was a bright one.
She was the last lifter in her session, like Bobby was in his. So there was plenty of time for horsing around.
For one of her first warm-up attempts, she was setting herself up for a double when Bobby said a joke under his breath. Caitlin erupted in laughter as they both lost focus momentarily. It only took a moment for her to rein it in and lift the bar perfectly, of course. She moved with precision - a lifter who made every attempt look the same; the kind of athlete that seems inevitable. You know the type; whenever they touch the bar, it’s never a “ehhhh, this could go either way”. It was certain that she would make the lift, and it was a shock when she didn’t.
It was important, Bobby would note, that fun was being had. Caitlin had come from a background where perfection was expected and there were negative consequences for subpar performance. And fun was most certainly had.
That is not to say that there wasn’t a method. Bobby knew when to say the words that would fire her up and the words that would relax her. Caitlin, too, was strong of mind and could flip-the-switch and make the world disappear, save the task of lifting the weight that didn’t want to budge from the ground.
Caitlin is an athlete, that much was made very evident. She would smoke a 63 kilo snatch weighing just over 49 kilos. She would be ferocious with the steel when she needed to and relaxed when there was not a bar in her hands - a balance that is immensely difficult to achieve.
There was no crowd to cheer for her that wasn’t the other competitors, the announcer, or the judges, but when she slammed that 63 kilo snatch to the floor, everyone in that large room was cheering her on.
We gathered up back in the warm up room where she was chewing her gum and putting her Sirkis Freaks shirt back on. During the interlude between snatches and clean and jerks, we contemplated what the most lazy way to stand up from a lying position on the ground would be.
And, yes, we did find the method. And trust me, it is madness.
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Sirkis Freaks is a non-profit organization that funds youth athletes to help them achieve their goals. From Bobby, the founder of the organization: “We have seen first hand what can be achieved when an athlete sets their own goals. These athletes have taken a separate path from their peers in order to achieve these goals. This makes them different. Most people think of freaks as different from others. The Sirkis Freaks Foundation embraces being different. We know that you must be willing to be different from the rest in order to truly do something special”.
To find out more about the organization, go to: Here