ABOVE: Fairmont High School sophomore, Jackson Goraczowksi, at the Minnesota High School Weightlifting State Meet earlier this month. Coach Andy Sodersten serves as his spotter. Submitted photo.

FAIRMONT– Jackson Goraczowksi has ‘raised the bar’ when it comes to weightlifting at the high school level. The sophomore student at Fairmont High School recently competed as the state’s first adaptive lifter at the Minnesota High School Weightlifting State Meet.

The weightlifting program itself is new to Fairmont High School. It launched just this year thanks to supporters and coaches, Andy and Josie Sodersten.

“We’ve been involved in weightlifting through Fairmont Crossfit for a long time and competitively weightlift ourselves. We saw a nice opportunity to bring the sport into the school,” said Josie, who is a social studies teacher within the district.

“It’s been blowing up in the schools… it’s really big in the metro,” added Andy.

However, he said there are no other weightlifting programs like this in local school districts which makes the program unique to Fairmont.

In its first year, there were six students grades 7-12 in the weightlifting program. The program ran from November through March.

“Its pretty good for the first year,” Andy said of participants this year.

Local students participated in six competitions this year, most of which were in the metro area. Most of the students took part in the majority of the meets and Goraczowksi participated in five of the six meets, and did so successfully.

Speaking as to why he got involved in lifting in the first place, Goraczowski said, “I first starting hearing about it (lifting) from one of my friends who’s an athlete. His parents also told me about it and my grandparent’s friends told me about it, so I thought I would give it a try.”

Andy said that Goraczowksi had started coming to Fairmont Crossfit about two years ago and once the school started offering it this school year it was a natural transition for him.

The competitions are like wrestling meets in the sense that there are different weight classes. As a school sport, it’s been around for just about 10 to 20 years at the most.

“There’s two lifts– the snatch and the clean and jerk– and you add each for one number and that’s your score,” Andy said.

After going through the majority of the meets, Goraczowksi qualified for the state meet, which was held March 9 in Cannon Falls, Minn.

“Since he was the first adaptive athlete in the state, me and the other coaches kind of wrote the rules on how to qualify. When he rolled into the first meet, everyone thought it was cool so we’re hoping some of those bigger schools get some of their adaptive athletes out next year for this, too,” said Andy.

About 200 people in total participated in the competition which included athletes of different genders and in different weight classes.

As for his favorite part of the meet, Goraczowksi said, “I liked all of the people who came. There were two other people (from the team) who came. They didn’t compete but they came to watch me.”

He plans to participate next year as well.

“There’s more interest for next year,” said Andy.

He believes the team will grow and noted that Goraczowksi is in contact with another Fairmont student in a wheelchair about joining next year.

Goraczowksi said he likes being able to grow and feel himself be able to lift more.

“What he does is pretty unique. A lot of weightlifting uses momentum and he doesn’t have that leg drive so it’s just pure muscle,” Josie said.

“We tried doing the weights he does and it’s hard. He’s super strong,” added Andy.

In addition to weightlifting, Goraczowksi plays on a special basketball team at the Lake Crystal rec center. He said the nearest team they play against is in the Twin Cities area.