- April 26, 2024
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There are times when you simply have to believe.
As a junior, Annie Buchanan is one of Florida’s top female weightlifters, but despite her training and her technique, to lift her maximum weight in a competition she needs her mind to be in the right place, too.
Referring to herself and her teammates at Flagler Palm Coast High School, Buchanan said, “We sometimes start to second-guess ourselves. … We think a lot about the weight.”
But then other teammates lend emotional support, convincing each other that they will succeed. They replace “Maybe I can lift this” with “This is going to be light.”
“Your teammates are a really big help in making you believe you can do a weight,” Buchanan said. “We’re always shouting at each other [at competitions].”
Those relationships are formed during hours of practices and conditioning and traveling to meets.
“It’s a really fun sport to bond with another set of girls and guys,” she said. “We push each other. … After weightlifting, we hang out in the car and jam out to music and talk. We eat together and bond.”
In her freshman and sophomore years, Buchanan finished third in the state in the 199-pound weight class; last year she bench-pressed 225 pounds and clean-and-jerked 175. She is hopeful that she can win a state championship in her junior or senior season — or both. (Her junior season started recently.)
Buchanan comes from a strong family: Her sister, Lexi, was a state champion as a sophomore, and then Lexi finished second in her junior and senior years.
“I’m aiming for my own state championship so I can brag about it to her,” Buchanan said with a smile. Her brothers also are FPC alumni, one of whom is pictured in a sports collage in a hallway at FPC, with a weight lifted over his head in a competition.
Coach Duane Hagstrom said that when Annie Buchanan was a freshman, she had a difficult time maintaining confidence. “If she missed a life, it was all over for her,” he said. “Now, she has confidence and is focused.”
“She is a great kid in and out of the weight room.”
DUANE HAGSTROM, FPC coach
But Buchanan isn’t just a standout because of her weightlifting. She is also on the lacrosse team, where she is preparing to be the team’s top goalie next year as a senior. She also is on the executive board for Student Government Association and attends many other high school sporting events at FPC to help the sports medicine staff support other athletes. She often gets home at 9 or 10 p.m.
“She is a great kid in and out of the weight room,” Hagstrom said. “She’s involved in just about everything there is to do here at the school.”
Athletics Director Steve DeAugustino is also impressed with Buchanan’s involvement throughout the school. He said many athletes struggle with setting goals because they aim too high at first. Buchanan has learned to improve her lifts in small increments, five pounds at a time, to reach the highest level of her sport.
Buchanan isn’t just in it for herself and her friends, either. She wants others to have what she has.
“With SGA, you’re creating another family,” she said, adding that she’s grown close to adviser Evana Fretterd. “If I’m not recruiting for weightlifting, I’m recruiting for SGA. Being involved is such a great thing because you’re being a Bulldog — you’re showing your school spirit and having fun. You make new friends as you go.”
