For theatre junior Lucy Quigley, chalk has multiple uses. When making costumes, she uses it to mark the fabrics for the theatre department’s plays. In the gym, she uses it to dust her hands before beginning her weightlifting training. 

Quigley has participated in Olympic-style weightlifting since her freshman year, competing in three meets since March. After winning silver overall at her first meet for performing two lifts — the Clean and Jerk and the Snatch — she qualified for the Florida State Weightlifting Championship, which took place in April 2025. 

“She (Quigley) is more confident now,” Quigley’s coach and founder of the weightlifting team, Bulletproof Barbell, Andrea DiRico said. “Instead of playing it safe, she’s willing to do riskier moves, and they paid off because she PRed (personal record) in the last meet (in both the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk).”

Quigley was “inspired” to start weightlifting after watching videos online about it. She and her sister, Sage Quigley began training together after her parents found a local coach for both of them.

“Over time, Sage began to focus more on regular strength training and MMA (mixed martial arts) fighting, while I stuck to weightlifting and started cheer,” Quigley said.

Quigley is also the conditioning captain for the cheer team and was part of the costume crew for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which has prevented her from meeting with DiRico more than once per week. During Quigley’s sessions, she practices lifting techniques, such as the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk, as well as squats and pull movements, including deadlifts. DiRico assigns Quigley “homework,” tasks that she can complete on her own at the gym, ranging from exercises like wide-grip front squats to yoga and visualization.

“She (Quigley) does the work when she’s not with me, which is a big deal, and she trusts me,” DiRico said. “She doesn’t have the schedule to be able to weightlift five times a week, but she’s still keeping up with her peers on the platform, which is really impressive.”

According to USA Weightlifting, during the Olympic weightlifting competition, the competitors are allowed three attempts for each lift. The highest weights from each lift (the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk) are combined, and the highest overall score wins. Quigley said that competing is a process that factors in the timing of warm-ups while other events occur simultaneously.

“If you go out (don’t complete) your first Snatch, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh. What if I make none of them?'” Quigley said. “You really have to get over the mental part. I downplay it and tell myself, ‘I can do this, and nothing bad is going to happen.’ If I fail, it’s fine because I’ll learn from it.”

The Snatch movement “requires the athlete to lift the barbell from the ground to overhead in one continuous motion,” according to crossfit.com. The Clean and Jerk, on the other hand, “requires the athlete to lift the barbell from the ground to the shoulders (the clean), followed by taking the load from the shoulders to the overhead position (the jerk).”

“(During her first competition), she (Quigley) was definitely really nervous, but once done warming up and finally out on the platform, she crushed it,” Lucy’s teammate on Bulletproof Barbell, Zoie Rosemeyer, said. “Lucy is extremely relentless when it comes to weightlifting.”

Although Quigley claims that her biggest struggle in weightlifting is “finding the time in (her) schedule to train,” she says that the lessons she’s learned from the sport have helped her improve her performance on the cheer team. 

“I make all of the workouts for the girls (on the cheerleading team),” Quigley said. “Since I’m a base, some of the movements (I do) are very similar to the ones I have to do in weightlifting, like the Snatch.”

Alongside weightlifting on her own at the gym, Quigley focuses on her nutrition and started an Instagram account with the username @lovelucee, which reflects her “interest in health and nutrition,” which is what she wants to pursue in college.

“Nutrition is very important, especially when you’re training for a performance like in a meet or competition,” Quigley said. “You need to understand how to fuel your body to actually improve your performance.”

As a result of her training, DiRico states that Quigley has “developed so much” since she began, from lifting less than 35 kilograms (77 lbs) in July 2025 to now being able to lift 40 kilograms (88 pounds) for her Snatch lift.

“She’s very coachable,” DiRico said, smiling. “She will always go for it, and she loves it (weightlifting). If she falls, she’s like, ‘Let’s do it again,’ and she’ll do it right then and there. She’s not afraid to fail, and she learns from her mistakes. She never rests.”

Claiming that competition “can be very psychological,” Quigley “forces (herself) to forget the people that (she’s) competing against and solely focuses on doing better than she did at (her) last meet” before lifting. 

“Just focus on yourself and remember that it is just you versus you,” Lucy said.