- November 23, 2024
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When Flagler Palm Coast weightlifting coach Duane Hagstrom was informed that he was selected to the 2025 class of the Florida Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame, he was taken aback.
“It’s a very big honor,” he said. “It’s kind of overwhelming when you look thorough the records of all the coaches inducted since the late ’70s. To think I belong with all those names is kind of humbling. Us coaches are always hard on ourselves and always think we can do better.”
Hagstrom will join one of his mentors and two of his FPC colleagues when he is inducted on Jan. 11 at the Drury Plaza Resort at Disney Springs.
He is the third Bulldogs coach to be selected to the FACA Hall of Fame. Track and cross country coach David Halliday was inducted in 2015 and girls soccer coach Pete Hald was inducted in 2020.
“We’re obviously so proud of him,” FPC athletic director Scott Drabczyk said. “It’s one of the state’s biggest honors that a coach can get. For him to be recognized by his peers, it’s very special for him. It’s the culmination of his years of hard work, serving the students at Flagler Palm Coast. We’re very fortunate to have him as part of our staff.”
Drabczk said he thinks FPC is the only school in the state that will have three FACA Hall of Fame members who are currently on the staff.
It’s kind of overwhelming when you look thorough the records of all the coaches inducted since the late ’70s. To think I belong with all those names is kind of humbling.”
— DUANE HAGSTROM
Hagstrom is one of a handful of coaches that have been voted into the Hall of Fame for weightlifting. The first was Dave Ramey of Spruce Creek, inducted in 1991. A year later, DeLand’s Bill Bradford joined him.
Bradford was the first person to teach Hagstrom how to lift weights when he was a young teenager.
“One of the things that makes it really special is to know that I’m included in the same category with those guys,” Hagstrom said. “Coach Bradford took me under his wing.”
Hagstrom played football and baseball at Taylor High School in Pierson. He went on to play football at Presbyterian College in South Carolina. One of his teammates had connections in DeLand and had met Bradford.
“My teammate asked me to come down to coach Bradford's house because he had a detached garage in the back of his house where he trained people,” Hagstrom said. “Coach Bradford was a mentor to me. Later in life, when I was coaching FPC, he was still hanging around DeLand weightlifting and he'd come to our meets and we would talk.”
Hagstrom lifted weights for football. Taylor High did not start a weightlifting team, Hagstrom said, until a year or two after he graduated from high school in 1991.
“I never considered myself a weightlifter,” Hagstrom said. “I played college football. I played in the Arena Football League. A big part of football was weightlifting. I lifted all my life just for that one purpose. After graduating college, I coached weightlifting (at Sandalwood High School in Jacksonville), and I didn’t know a lot about the sport at the time, so I had to learn a lot over the last 30 years.”
In three years at Sandalwood, his girls weightlifting team won three conference championships and never lost a match.
He moved to FPC in 2002 and coached football and the boys weightlifting team. He started a girls weightlifting program at FPC in 2007. His boys team won a state championship in 2022.
Hagstrom has coached 15 high school state champs and 17 others who have won AAU and USA Weightlifting titles. After he began coaching weightlifting he became a competitor himself and was inducted into the Florida Strength and Power Hall of Fame a year ago.
Bradford passed away five or six years ago, Hagstrom said. However, Hagstrom said he expects his grandfather to be at his induction ceremony as well as Tommy Morris, his high school football coach.
“My grandfather is a big part of why I'm successful and he's still alive and kicking, so he's going to be there hopefully, and it’s going to be a special night,” Hagstrom said, “because this is not just me, it's a credit to my family, my mentors, my coaches, my professional colleagues and the athletes that I've trained. They have all had a part in molding me into who I am today. Without them, I wouldn't have this honor.”
