Autumn Sands, representing Team USA Weightlifting at the 2024 Youth Pan American Championships, returned home Monday from Guayaquil, Ecuador with third place bronze medals and a big smile.
This was the second international meet for the 16-year-old Parsons High School junior, and back-to-back national champion.
“It was for youth Pan Ams, so it was like South America, the United States and Canada - that region, so a little smaller than Worlds, but still international,” Sands said. “I’ve been training for this meet for about the past two months. We started the cycle towards the middle of June, so it’s been a lot of work and a lot of dedication going into it.”
She competed in the Youth 17, which means 17 and under and at the same time was going up against the 15 and under group. She is in the 64 kilogram weight class. All of the young ladies were from different countries.
“They take the best from each country, and those are the ones who compete,” she said.
The difference between bringing home a medal or not can sometimes be a change of mindset, of thought process.
Her first international meet went kind of rough, Sands said, just being away from home and in a different environment. She was very nervous. She faced the same anxiety at the International Weightlifting Federation Youth World Championships in Lima, Peru, in May, where she placed 11th.
Previously, she would get so nervous before her competitions it affected her mentally and affected her performance. There are weights that she would hit multiple times in training that she would miss at the competitions, because she was overthinking everything.
“For this meet to go as well as it did, honestly, was very refreshing to me. It kind of gave me that pick me up because after Worlds, I kind of got down on myself. I kind of started struggling with my mental health a little bit, just with all the dedication that it took for it not to pay off at Worlds,” she said. “In this cycle, this is something else I focused on. I got with a therapist and we started working on that, because you can be physically strong, but if you don’t have it mentally, it can really affect you. I think that what was so different from my last international meet is that I came into it not only physically stronger but mentally stronger.”
Two more things that aided her mentally before this meet, was firstly the incredible support she had from family, friends and community back home and secondly that in weightlifting you can see the other competitors’ rankings before she went to lift.
“I had the advantage because I was one of the stronger ones going into the competition. So, the people that lifted before me, we knew how they did. My first attempt on both lifts actually secured me the bronze medal,” Sands said. “My coach told me, ‘If you hit this, it will be a medal. It was nice to know going up onto the platform, "If I hit this, I’ve secured an international medal.”
Going into a competition you always want to shoot for the best. You want to shoot to win the medals, but Sands said she and her coach sat down and had a more grown up conversation on how to look at it, and what they wanted to do in regards to what was best for her on that day.
She was ready for the push.
“So we went out and made sure I made all my lifts and made sure I felt confident and good about what I was doing so I would have a more positive outlook on competition rather than dreading it,” she said.
This competition behind her, she plans to enjoy the next couple of months, just being a 16-year-old, hanging out with her friends, and participating in some fun, local CrossFit competitions, which is something she very much enjoys.
Then, she plans to dig in and move back into her intense training and to enable her to again qualify to represent Team USA Weightlifting during the finals in December in Arizona. Qualifying there will once again put her competing at the Youth Worlds Competition back at Lima, Peru.
“That’s a big goal,” she said.
In the meantime, Sands said, “It’s just finding a balance between lifting, and CrossFit and just being a teenager. During these two months, I can get back to doing what I enjoy for fun rather than being in that constant training mindset, competition mindset. It's nice to finally be able to relax.”