- February 3, 2025
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When Flagler Palm Coast senior Madeline Brinker was a freshman, her primary sport was rowing. But weightlifting changed her life, so much so that she quit rowing this year to concentrate on the high school girls weightlifting season.
Brinker is one of eight area lifters to qualify for the girls state championships Feb. 14-15 at the RP Funding Center in Lakeland. Of the eight, Brinker’s teammate Nya Williams, Seabreeze’s Sofia James and Father Lopez’s Bergyn Baliton have the best chance of winning a state title.
Baliton is a two-time state champ. She won the 110-pound class at the Region 2-1A meet on Feb. 1 in Chiefland in both the Olympic competition (snatch and clean and jerk totals) and the traditional competition (clean and jerk and bench press totals). She is the top-seeded lifter at state in both with a 295-pound total in traditional and 275 pounds in Olympic.
Williams is the top seed at 119 pounds in the Class 3A Olympic competition and the fifth seed in the traditional competition. The sophomore placed first in Olympic and second in traditional (both with a 315-pound total) in the Region 1-3A meet on Feb. 1 at FPC.
James placed second in both competitions in the 169-pound weight class in the Region 2-2A meet at Gainesville High. Heading into the Class 2A state meet, she has the third-highest traditional total (385 pounds) and the fifth-highest Olympic total (320 pounds). James placed fourth at state last year in traditional with a 350-pound total.
The other state qualifiers are: Ryann Parkinson of Matanzas in 101-pound traditional in Class 3A after placing fifth at region, Seabreeze’s Madison James in 101-pound Olympic in Class 2A after placing placing fifth at region; Father Lopez’s Victoria Viera at 119 pounds in Class 1A in both competitions after placing second in both events at region; and Father Lopez’s Alexa Galvedon at 129 pounds in Class 1A in both competitions after placing third in traditional and second in Olympic at region.
Brinker will be competing at state for the second year in a row. She qualified for the Class 3A 101-pound Olympic competition after placing third at region. She tied Parknson with a 200-pound traditional total at region but finished two spots behind the Matanzas senior for seventh place. Ties are based on body weight. Parkinson earned the last spot at state.
Brinker has a good opportunity of reaching the podium in Lakeland if she can have a good day on both of her lifts, FPC coach Duane Hagstrom said.
“(At region) she had a great day on snatch and didn’t have the greatest day on clean and jerk,” he said. “She’s one of my few (lifters) that have been around for four years. She’s been very successful.”
Brinker said Hagstrom saw a spark in her over three years ago that she didn’t see in herself.
“This weightlifting team has helped me in more ways than he knows,” she said. “Coming into high school I was dealing with the loss of my father. I was the quietest pipsqueak. I would shy away in a corner. Now I’m not afraid to be a leader in the room. He helped me grow mentally and physically.”
Hagstrom said he saw something in her.
“She was super powerful for an 85-pounder or whatever she weighed when she was a freshman,” he said. “And she had the tools I knew that it took to be successful. She's been a workhorse. She's trained with me year-round with very little time off for four years and at the same time she was a competitive rower.”
Brinker had been a rower for about six years with the Palm Coast Rowing Club. As the coxswain she was the leader, being the one responsible for steering the boat and coordinating the rhythm of the rowers. But her club had a very small youth team and, she said, she had to join up with the First Coast Rowing Club in Jacksonville to be able to compete in national events.
This past year, she stepped away from rowing to prioritize weightlifting. Brinker and Williams are the co-captains of the team this year and they will serve as each other’s top cheerleaders at state, Brinker said.
“I’ll be surprised if Nya is not a state champion,” Brinker said.
Williams placed fifth in Olympic and seventh in traditional as a freshman at state last year in the 110-pound class. She didn’t have her best day at region, she said. She missed her last clean and jerk attempt of 185 pounds, but she had already clinched the Olympic title with a 175-pound lift for the 315-pound total. She has lifted 185 pounds before. A 180-pound clean and jerk might be enough to win at state.
“It's going to come down to the third clean and jerk for the state championship, because there's three other girls who have the same exact total or five pounds under that she had (at region). So, It's going to be a fun little battle,” Hagstrom said.
