Utah State Powerlifting Club travels to New Orleans for nationals competition
For the members of the Utah State University Powerlifting Club, it was time to pump some iron at nationals last week.
The club competed at the USA Powerlifting Collegiate Nationals, held from April 9-12 in New Orleans. The team left for the competition on April 7, and athletes participated in individual lifting events every day of the four-day competition.
Managed by USU Campus Recreation, the club sport aims to provide “a space for athletes at USU who specialize in squat, bench and deadlifts to come together and compete,” according to Ian Maughan, club vice president.
Maughan said anyone is welcome to join the team regardless of experience or strength level, though a fee is required to participate and compete.
According to club social officer Kate Bushnell, the group takes a more relaxed, unstructured approach to the sport, allowing its 20-30 members to set their own goals at practice and work with any program that aligns with their individual fitness goals.
Participating in competitions like nationals is not a requirement. However, Bushnell says many members find it to be a high point of the club experience — and for some, it’s their first time competing on a national level.
“It’s a big goal for a lot of powerlifters on the team. We get people who have never competed and never even powerlifted, and they hear that we’re going to collegiate nationals,” Bushnell said. “It becomes a really big motivating factor.”
As announced on the club’s Instagram page, nine Aggie athletes competed in New Orleans, including Maughan and Bushnell. Other club members who competed were Hayden Randall, McKenna Hughes, Rebekah Jardine, Zachary Edwards, Derek Hayes, Parker Williams and Charles Gardiner.
According to Maughan, each athlete competed in an individual event within their weight class, and their performance translated to “points” for the entire team’s ranking.
The club has competed in several national competitions in years past, with some of the most recent ones taking place in Oklahoma City in 2025 and Atlanta in 2024. Maughan, who is in his fourth year of membership on the team, had high hopes for the group’s performance at nationals.
“We’ve continued to send more athletes every year,” Maughan said. “In Atlanta, I want to say we placed 183rd — something like that, really deep in the list of all the schools, and then just in this last year, we placed 23rd. So, quite a bit of improvement.”
Although the team always wants to perform well in competitions, Bushnell said she believes the most rewarding thing the club brings to campus is its strong sense of community.
“We’re all trying to get stronger, and that can be physically and mentally. It’s just a really supportive community, and we’re all working to help each other,” Bushnell said. “I know so many of my teammates who have made so many friends from being on the team, and you just get so close in a whole different way when you’re struggling together and learning together. It’s fun.”
It’s a sentiment Maughan agreed with.
“The people that stick around for a long time are the people that make friends — the people that get really involved with the team and the community,” he said. “The powerlifting team is providing a space for people that are either former athletes or really enjoy fitness, lifting weights and getting strong — just a place for them to hang out with people that are also interested in those things.”