16-year-old female Destrehan powerlifter looks forward to season

Ashton Chatelain, a 16 year old power lifter here at Destrehan, has some big meets coming up.

As we all know Ashton is very dedicated and talented in power lifting. She travels around the United States to compete. She started power lifting for a month her freshmen year, but she really started lifting her sophomore year. Ashton got interested in power lifting because when she was in softball, her coach wanted her to power lift to help her with the sport. Then she started to enjoy power lifting and got more interested in it than softball. Ashton practices every day for two hours. Brooke Bourg and Ashton’s mom, Debbie Chatelain, are her coaches.

Ashton has a lot of big meets coming up. She has an ADF meet September 12th in Farmersville, Texas. Her next big meet is Nov. 19 in Bournemouth, England. Ashton is more nervous for her meet in England, but she thinks if the stays confident then she will do well. She will be competing against girls in the 16-17 year old age group.

Before her big meets she has to do a lot of preparing. Two days before she competes she is still lifting, but she usually does a lot of cardio and ab workouts. When the power lifting team goes to meets they do not just compete against one school, they compete against more than one at a time. Ashton is expecting to see some familiar faces at the meet. She is never sure what to expect when she goes to meets because every school brings different competitors who are stronger at some events then others. She squats 425 Ib, benches 215 Ib, and dead lifts 405 Ib.

When asked about her feelings on being a girl and one of the best members of the power lifting team Ashton replied, “It’s an amazing accomplishment’! We do have some girls on the team this year but I pushed myself to compete with guys.” Ashton holds the APF world dead lift record at 405 pounds and she almost broke the AWPC world dead lift record of 420 pounds in Chicago.

When asked if she is planning on doing power lifting in her future, she replied, “I’ve told myself I will die lifting weights; they have age groups up to 70+ and I will be lifting in it at that age, I can’t really hope for Olympics because they have weight lifting which is different from power lifting but I plan on lifting through college and then professionally!”

Submitted by Erica Broussard