By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University
Let’s go to Copenhagen, Denmark for the Master’s World Weightlifting Championships. The competitors have completed their lifts, the judges have totaled the weights, and the winner is: Anna Martin, whose weightlifting career began in Onaga, Kansas.
Last week we met Cindy and Phil Martin, whose daughter Anna became a weightlifter. After a remarkable collegiate career as a weightlifter, Anna now operates her own training facility in Mission, Kansas.
Anna grew up in Onaga. Before high school, her younger brothers were lifting weights at school and the coach encouraged her to join them.
“I told him, ‘No, girls don’t lift weights,’” Martin said.
But as she prepared for high school volleyball, her parents told her that she could jump higher and run faster if she did some weight training. She tried weightlifting – and became hooked on the sport. Two months later, she competed in her first meet.
“The people were so nice and supportive,” Martin said. “As a shy 14-year-old girl, it made an impression on me.”
Martin pursued Olympic weightlifting. The event consists of two lifts: The snatch and the clean and jerk. Competitors are divided into weight classes. The winner is the competitor in each class who lifts the highest combined total weight.
Martin continued her weightlifting career at Missouri Western State University. She won the Collegiate National Championship in 2005 and placed in the top three at every national and American Open event from 2001 to 2006.
She lifted for the United States in Mexico City and Guatemala City and placed second in Mexico City’s Olympic Festival. In 2004, she was the first alternate to the Olympic Trials and qualified for the World Team Trials in 2006.
After graduating in health and exercise science, she went into a coaching career while continuing to compete. Martin served as a graduate assistant strength coach at Oklahoma State and Tulane before coaching at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado.
Sometimes a female has to prove herself in a male-dominated weight room. “One day when I was at Oklahoma State, the coach came in and told me to lift,” Martin said. “After they saw me (perform), the guys all came to me for their Olympic weightlifting questions.”
Martin returned to Kansas City and worked for the Boys and Girls Club.
“We took six kids from the inner city who had never seen a barbell before,” Martin said. “Five became national champions and the sixth got second.”
Their families didn’t have the money to fly, so Martin and the competitors literally drove from Kansas City to San Francisco for the Youth Nationals and drove to Virginia Beach for the Junior Olympics.
“It was such a great experience for those kids,” Martin said.
She now competes at the Master’s level. In June, 2014, she won the Master’s Pan American Championships. In September, she won the 2014 Master’s World Championships in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Her competitions have taken her from Quatar to Uzbekistan. “I’ve got friends around the world,” she said.
One of her goals was to have her own gym. In 2011, she opened KC Weightlifting in Mission. Today, she’s coaching more than 100 athletes, ages 6 to 79. She has coached more than 30 national champions. In 2008, she was named AAU Coach of the Year.
“It’s really coaching people, not just weight-training, but helping people in all aspects of life,” she said. “We’re building better humans.”
Martin became emotional as she told about a young man whom she had taught weight-lifting and who went on to become a personal trainer.
“He said, ‘I have earned a full ride to the University of Missouri and I’m going to become a doctor, and it’s all because of you,’” she said.
That’s an impactful story for someone who grew up in the rural community of Onaga, population 679 people. Now, that’s rural.
For more information, see www.kcweightlifting.com.
Farewell to Copenhagen, where this young woman from rural Kansas has earned a world championship. We commend Anna Martin for making a difference with her coaching of all ages.
She’s not just lifting weights; she is uplifting people.Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at https://www.huckboydinstitute.org/kansas-profiles. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.huckboydinstitute.org.
