- January 21, 2025
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FPC weightlifting senior Maddie Brinker applies a green handprint on coach Duane Hagstrom's head after a weightlifting meet on Senior Night. Photo by Brent Woronoff
FPC weightlifting senior Graciella Cruz applies a green handprint on coach Duane Hagstrom's head after a weightlifting meet on Senior Night. Photo by Brent Woronoff
FPC weightlifting coach Duane Hagstrom delivers his Florida Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame induction speech on Jan. 11. Courtesy photo
FPC weightlifting coach Duane Hagstrom. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Four days after an “amazing, humbling” weekend during which Flagler Palm Coast High School weightlifting coach Duane Hagstrom was inducted into the Florida Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame, his senior girls lifters were applying green handprints to the top of his head.
Their hands were dripping with green paint as they applied their prints onto his head after a meet with Mainland on Senior Night, Jan. 15. FPC defeated Mainland in both the traditional and Olynmpic competitions.
The Bulldogs honored their four seniors — Maddie Brinker, Jillam Rivera, Craciella Cruz and Amani Nelson — before the meet. And the seniors honored their coach days after he received the biggest honor of his career.
He was one of eight coaches inducted into the FACA Hall of Fame on Jan. 11 in Disney Springs. He was the only weightlifting coach in the 2025 class.
Hagstrom became the third FPC coach to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, joining track and cross country coach David Halliday and girls soccer coach Pete Hald. FPC is the only school in the state with three active coaches in the Hall of Fame.
Hagstrom is just the eighth weightlifting coach to be inducted into the Hall. The first was DeLand’s Bill Bradford, who taught Hagstrom how to lift weights. Bradford passed away in 2015.
“It was an amazing weekend. It was a very humbling,” Hagstrom said. “I thought everybody was making more of a big deal out of it than I was, but I was pretty humbled to be in the same room with some of those guys that got inducted with me.”
Hagstrom said he never gets nervous before speaking in front of a crowd, but this time he did, because he knew he was going to get emotional.
“Duane is a big dude, but he has a really big heart and a soft side that a lot of people don’t know about,” FPC athletic director Scott Drabczk said. “He did a phenomenal job with his speech. I got emotional seeing him up there. I’m so proud of him.”
Hagstrom was joined by his wife and kids, his dad, his grandfather and his grandmother, many of his former athletes, colleagues and coaching friends and his football coach at Taylor High School in Pierson, Tommy Morris.
“I hadn't seen him in 15 years,” Hagstrom said. “So that was really nice for him to show up and be supportive of what I'd done. I owe a lot of what I became because of him. He's the one that planted the seed to make me want to be a coach when I was in high school, because he was such an amazing coach.”
Hagstrom’s first state qualifier at FPC, Binaire Michel in 2004, flew from his home in Texas to be at Hagstrom’s induction ceremony.
“It was very special to me because I had a lot of my ex-athletes there,” he said. "There's a lot of things I talked about in my speech, but one of the things that I thought was really touching for me is my mentor, the man who taught me how to lift weights and introduced me to weightlifting was the long-time DeLand coach, Bill Bradford. And he was one of the first weightlifting coaches to get inducted into that same Hall of Fame. And his team won the very first ever FHSAA state championship in weightlifting (in 1974), and my team won the very last one using the old format. So it was really neat to just be inducted into the same Hall of Fame that he got inducted into.”
