- April 29, 2024
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Mainland High School’s Elijah Walker probably would have won a state weightlifting championship last year if the Bucs had been eligible to compete.
Mainland re-instituted its weightlifting program last season after the school dropped the program 18 years ago, coach Chris Fricke said. But the Bucs were considered a club team and were ineligible to compete in FHSAA postseason meets.
Walker, a 6-foot-4, 335 offensive lineman who has signed to play football at Alabama State, might have won the unlimited title by more than 50 pounds.
This year the senior is favored to stand on the top step of the podium at the Class 2A state championships on Saturday, April 20, in Lakeland.
He’s listed as a 10-pound favorite in the traditional competition based on his 715-pound regional total. But with first place clinched, he stopped bench pressing after his first lift of 405 pounds. At districts the week before, he benched 430 pounds and clean-and-jerked 310 for a 740 total.
His bench press is way up this year, but after tearing his MCL and meniscus in Mainland’s blue and gold spring scrimmage last May, his clean and jerk has been way down.
He underwent surgery on June 6, sat out all of summer and missed the first three games of the football season.
“I came back and I was not even able to clean and jerk 135,” he said. “I was out for nine weeks, and I could only bench. That’s why my bench is so strong now. But doing physical therapy every single day, pushing myself out of my comfort zone, nights of pain and just suffering and just stretching and getting my knee back right, it got me to where I am today.”
If Walker wins the championship, he will become the Bucs’ first unlimited champ since Wilbert Kendrick in 1987. Walker has a good chance of topping Kendrick’s 735-pound total. But he’s not taking anything for granted.
“It’s like a football game,” he said. “It can turn South at any moment.You could hit one lift and then the other lifts are just complete misses, so you just got to stay humble.”
Walker played football for Mainland as a freshman but transferred to Spruce Creek for his sophomore year after Bucs coach Scott Wilson stepped down. Walker joined the weightlifting team at Creek and learned how to clean and jerk. He also filled out his enormous frame.
Seeing that the Bucs had a good football coach in Travis Roland, and wanting to play football with his friends again, Walker transferred back to Mainland for his junior year. That year, Fricke began teaching at the school. He and then-defensive coordinator Lester Davis wondered, how does a school with such a good football team not have a weightlifting program?
Walker returned to Mainland to play football, but he found he liked competitive weightlifting just as much.
“He’s always been one of those people that pushed himself,” Fricke said. “Even when we were a club he was bent on winning a state championship.”
Walker already has a state championship ring with the Bucs as a football player. Now he hopes to be a double state champ.
Flagler Palm Coast graduate Caroline Rizzo, a golfer at Mars Hill University, has been named the 2024 South Atlantic Conference Women's Golf Elite 23 Winner.
This award honors the student-athlete with the top cumulative grade-point average (based on a minimum of 48 credit hours) in each of the league's 23 team championship sports.
Rizzo, a junior, holds a 3.989 grade point average while studying political science and pre-law.
Flagler Palm Coast's baseball team will play for the Five Star Conference championship on Thursday, Arpil 18. The Bulldogs won their sixth in a row on April 16 with a 5-3 win over Spruce Creek in a semifinal. Kevin Maya pitched a complete game victory.
The Bulldogs (11-10) beat Seabreeze for the third time in less than a week on April 13 with a 3-0 win in the Five Star quarterfinals. Ayden Normandin pitched six shutout innings for FPC.
