Hedke and Mima headline at lifting sports national meets

Photo credit: Concordia Athletics

By Kai Olbrich and Aaron Spivey

This article is featured in the May print edition of the Sower newspaper. 

Senior Taylor Hedke and junior Kaiden Mima headlined the Concordia lifting sports national campaigns through versatility and dominance at the University Weightlifting and Powerlifting National meets in April.

Weightlifting and powerlifting have many similarities, but are separate sports that employ different exercises in competition and have separate national competitions, with the powerlifting national meet in Kenner, Louisiana, and the weightlifting meet in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Weightlifting uses the snatch, in which the bar is taken straight from the ground to above the athlete’s head, and the clean and jerk, where the weight is brought from the ground to the shoulders and then pressed above the head. Powerlifting uses the squat, bench press and deadlift to assess the competitors.

Both sports break the athletes up into weight classes and allow competitors three attempts on each exercise. Then, the best score for each lift is added together for a complete weight total. There are also no divisions in collegiate lifting sports, so every school competes on the same playing field, from National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics teams to NCAA Division I teams. All-American honors are given to the top three competitors in each weight class for powerlifting, and to everyone who achieves a certain weight total in weightlifting based on their class.

Mima capped off his junior season by winning his second weightlifting national title. The first was last year at the 2025 weightlifting national meet, where he won in a very close field in the 61kg division. Mima posted a total of 212kg, which was just 1kg higher than second and third place.

This time around, Mima left nothing to chance, winning by more than 50kg, compared with second place. Mima’s first attempt in both his snatch and clean and jerk broke the Collegiate American record, and he went on to raise the standard to 107kg in the snatch and 137 in the clean and jerk.

Due to Mima’s success, he earned recognition from Team USA and, according to weightlifting and powerlifting coach Freddie Myles, has a strong chance to compete at the University Worlds 2026, scheduled to take place in Doha, Qatar.

“Being part of Team USA has had a big impact on my progress,” Mima said. “Everyone is disciplined, detailed, and focused on long-term success.”

Myles also said that Mima has the second-best total for his weight class in the nation, which includes all collegiate and open categories.
Mima said that his approach remained consistent despite returning as a defending champion. “I didn’t change anything,” Mima said. “I just focused on my lifts and trusted what I’ve been doing in training.”

For senior Hedke, the road to nationals required more than just physical strength. Competing in both powerlifting and weightlifting nationals over the span of two days and at locations nearly 2,000 miles apart tested her endurance, recovery and mental focus.

“The hardest part wasn’t just lifting,” Hedke said. “It was managing fatigue and staying focused while still having to perform at a high level when traveling from powerlifting nationals to weightlifting nationals.”

Myles praised Hedke’s work ethic and worked with her leading up to the national meets to ensure that the plan was feasible. The day before Concordia’s home weightlifting meet, Myles had Hedke perform a mock powerlifting meet to test whether she could do well on back-to-back days.

That approach translated into results as Hedke earned All-American honors at both meets. She placed second at powerlifting with a 437.5kg total in the 63kg division. She then hopped on a plane from Kenner to Salt Lake City to compete at weightlifting nationals, where she placed fourth with a 176kg total.

“Being able to earn All-American honors in both sports means a lot to me because it showed that all the work I’ve put in paid off,” Hedke said.

Junior Evan Fukuhara has been a consistent point-earner and All-American over the past three seasons. Fukuhara placed second at the 2026 nationals with a 264kg total in the 71kg division. He was also the national runner-up in 2025 and won a national title two years ago in 2024.

For both powerlifting and weightlifting, the Concordia teams had some of the best finishes in program history. One that stood out to Myles was the coed third-place result at the weightlifting meet.

“We’re not one of the bigger teams, so we’re smaller, but we have a lot of quality, and coed is a place where that can shine because you’re splitting between the two,” Myles said. “So whereas on the girls side, we don’t have enough numbers to compete against the big teams, but we have really good lifters, and then the same thing on the men’s side.”

At weightlifting nationals, the men placed fifth, and the women were eighth. In powerlifting, the women were fifth, and the men dropped to sixth after a tiebreaker with fifth-place Louisiana State University.

Myles credits a lot of the success to the work his athletes put in every day. They didn’t just come in and expect to be great; they did all the big and small things along the way.

“You can see that they put in the work over the break, not just coast and hope for the same as last year,” Myles said. “So they were hungry and worked hard for the course of the year, and then the fruit was them doing better with higher placings.”

One of the standouts at powerlifting nationals was junior Will Peterson. Peterson placed fifth at nationals as a freshman, but an injury kept him out of competing last year. Peterson returned to the national stage with some major improvements, placing second and earning All-American honors after a close battle that came down to the final lift.

Peterson compiled a total of 820kg competing in the 140kg division. Peterson said that he lost consciousness inches away from locking out on his final deadlift attempt that would have tied his total for first place at 827.5kg.

Despite some personal disappointment, Peterson still had a great time spending time with his team and making memories.

“It’s always fun being with those guys, like, I tell people all the time when we go on those trips, even if you have a bad meet, try to just enjoy it,” Peterson said. “You’re not gonna get to go on too many of these. So, yeah, it’s always fun being with them.”

Junior Teya Badger also became an All-American at powerlifting nationals, where she placed third in the 100kg division with a total of 485kg. She pointed to the level of competitiveness as a defining aspect of the meet.

“What stood out to me during nationals was how competitive everything was,” Badger said. “Everyone there earned their spot, so it really comes down to who stayed composed and executed their lifts.”

The experience of being at nationals for Badger also provided a perspective on future development in her career. “Being on that stage made me realize how far I’ve come, but also how much more I can improve,” Badger said. “It motivates me to keep pushing and come back even stronger next time.”

Another third placer at powerlifting was sophomore Wyatt Hosick. After coming up just short of All-American in 2025, he was determined to improve and compete for a national title. Despite not reaching the pinnacle quite yet, Hosick is proud of what he has accomplished and is looking forward to climbing even further.

“It was a really good feeling,” Hosick said. “You know, you worked all year for something like this, and after coming up short last year, you know, finally getting to that top three spot to get an All-American position, it was a good moment to finally feel like you accomplished something that you’ve worked so hard for.”

Other notable competitors include senior Dax Davis, who climbed to fourth in the 56kg powerlifting division with a 477.5kg total; sophomore Enzo Mancini was fourth in the 94kg weightlifting division with a 303kg total; senior Katie Wilson got sixth in the 48kg powerlifting division with a 307.5kg; freshman Abigail Nelson got sixth in the 53kg weightlifting division with 132kg total; and junior Leo Guiza got seventh in the 110kg powerlifting division with a 780kg total.