- July 11, 2025
Flagler Palm Coast High School weightlifter Nya Williams is a national champion.
Williams dominated her weight category to win three gold medals at the USA Weightlifting National Championships on Sunday night, June 22, at Colorado Springs.
Williams competed in the Youth National Championship women's U17 age group in the 53-kilogram (116.8-pound) weight category. She won all three titles in the Olympic competition — snatch, clean and jerk and total weight.
As she prepared to fly to Colorado Springs last week, Williams, an incoming junior at FPC, admitted she was a little nervous.
She had never flown before. She had never competed on the national stage before. And she wasn’t sure what it would be like to compete in the thin air of Colorado Springs with an elevation over 6,000 feet.
“I’m a little nervous,” she said on Wednesday, June 18, the day before she and FPC weightlifting coach Duane Hagstrom flew to the championships. “It's more like, I’m anxious. I'm excited to be there and see everything and have the opportunity to go out there and compete. I'm ready, but I'm excited and a little nervous. A little bit of everything.”
But it turned out she had no reason to be nervous. She was the top seed by a total of 53 pounds among 22 competitors, and she won by over 50 pounds.
She hit all six of her lifts with a max of 63 kilograms (138.89 pounds) in the snatch and 82 kilos (180.78 pounds) in the clean and jerk for a total of 145 kilos (319.67 pounds). Her closest competitor for total weight was Taylyn Slater of Team Houston with 122 kilos (268.96 pounds). Williams also won the Best Athlete award with a calculated score of 230.972.
Williams competed as a member of the Florida Elite team. Only eight lifters in all categories were selected for Florida Elite, Hagstrom said. There was one other area lifter at nationals on the Florida Elite team — Olivia Bond-West of New Smyrna Beach, competing in the 77-plus kilogram weight category.
Williams could have qualified for nationals with her high school state championship totals. She placed second in Olympic lifts in the 119-pound class at the Class 3A championships on Feb. 15. She snatched 140 pounds and clean and jerked 180 for a 320 total.
But she also competed in a qualifying meet — the USAW Florida championships — winning the title in her weight category with a 321.9-pound total.
“It was just to give her experience of actually doing a USA weightlifting meet versus a high school meet, because it's completely different. And that qualified her for nationals,” Hagstrom said.
They flew out on June 19, three days before her competition, so she could get acclimated to the altitude and the two-hour time difference.
“We were very fortunate that we had some people that donated money and sponsored the trip,” Hagstrom said.
Williams said she was looking forward to competing on the national level for the first time and meeting lifters from other states.
“I know my competition in Florida,” she said. “But I don’t know what’s outside of Florida. I would say one of my favorite things about being at a meet is having fun with the other girls, because we all have something in common. We all love weightlifting.”
Winning at the USAW nationals gets Williams’ name out there.
“This is where they choose the USA teams from,” Hagstrom said. “She could potentially make a Pan American Games team in the future, and then eventually possibly get an opportunity to go to the Olympic Trials.”
Making the U.S. Olympic team someday is her goal, Williams said.
“We’ll make it there eventually — the 2032 Olympics,” she said. “It’s the goal.”
Williams is the first weightlifter Hagstrom has taken to USAW nationals since the early 2000s and the first female lifter he has ever taken to the competition.
“I was really involved in USA weightlifting for a long time, and I've probably been out of it now for about 12 years, and I'm trying to get back into it again,” he said. “Our goal, hopefully, is to get more kids involved and potentially take a much larger group next year.”
Williams weighed in at 111.6 pounds for the 119-pound class at the high school state championships, but maintaining weight is harder during the summer, she said. Hagstrom said it was his job to make sure she drank plenty of water and didn’t eat the wrong stuff, but “she always takes care of business when she needs to,” he said.
“Just don’t stick a doughnut in my face, and we’re good,” she quipped.
Because the weights are in kilos instead of pounds, Hagstrom said Williams wouldn’t necessarily know how much weight she was lifting, which could be a good thing.
“He just throws numbers at me,” she said, “and I’m like, OK…”
But setting personal records wasn't the point anyway, Williams said. Her qualifying total was 321.9 pounds, but she didn't need to match it.
“The goal is to win. If a (personal record) is needed and if it’s there, we're going to go for it most likely, but the goal is to win,” she said. “I know I’m good, but I don't consider myself good until I'm the best. Winning is a step forward, but there's always more (competitions) to go. There's someone always stronger than you.”
At the 2025 national championships, she was the best.
