The shortest sports seasons of the school year is over, and for the powerlifting team that means the regional meet for girls Thursday at Prosper High School and the boys Saturday at Central High School in Keller.

“It’s a relatively short season, about 4 weeks,” powerlifting coach Mark Thomas said. “That’s it, once that’s over we have regionals and then state.”

Not a UIL sport, the Texas High School Powerlifting Association oversees powerlifting which has been an extracurricular activity since the campus opened in 2007.

“Powerlifting is all about three lifts,” Thomas said. “It’s squat, bench press, and deadlift and which in itself it’s pretty simple, but there’s a lot of rules as to how you do each lift so that the lift is legal. So a lot of the practice time we spend is working on commands, working on perfecting the technical part of the lifts, and then of course also trying to get stronger so we can lift more weight.”

In years past, the girls’ team has struggled with numbers, but this year three girls are on the team. For junior Nelly Chimal, her passion for powerlifting comes from a sport she also plays.

“In softball we do weight room workouts and I’ve always loved weight room workouts so I guess my coach, she saw that, and just mentioned that powerlifting didn’t have any girls in it so I was like, might as well give it a try,” Chimal said. “It’s not really that different. I feel pretty normal about it because there’s other girls and we’ve formed a really close bond so it’s really nice to work out with them almost everyday. I was a little skeptical about joining, but then I just tried it out and I absolutely love it. One hundred percent.”

Having a few girls on the team has gotten the attention of boys’ team member, junior Myron Huff.

“I think it’s pretty cool that there’s three girls that tried out for powerlifting because when you see powerlifting, you mostly think of guys doing it and there’s three girls from our school that tried out and I think it’s amazing,” Huff said. “I recommend any girl that’s out there that just wants to come to powerlifting. I think it would be awesome of you all came to powerlifting. It’d sure help our team.”

For now, the team is what it is and for Thomas that means a couple of chances at state.

“Edward Zheng and Dexter Green are the two boys,” Thomas said. “You need to be in the top two to qualify for state. Edward is gonna need a good day, and maybe a couple guys ahead of him to have bad days, but he’s got a shot. Dexter is a little further behind, so it’s gonna be a little tough for him to make the top two. And Nellie Chamara, she’s on the girls side. She’s ranked 9th right now in the region, but she’s gonna go and compete and hopefully get in the top five.”