“I’m just like everyone else. I’m just strong. And a little crazy, but that’s it,” laughed South Garland High senior A’jaLynn Bostic after her fourth championship.
GARLAND, Texas — A’jaLynn Bostic’s mom will tell you she’s always been tough. One day in middle school proved it, she says — that day when a middle school boy kept bugging her daughter.
“I had told him to leave me alone,” the now 18-year-old South Garland High School senior said. “So I just kind of shoved him and he kind of went over the table.”
“And she put the boy over the desk,” A’jaLynn’s mom Kalvilena Loyd said of the incident witnessed by coaches of the school football team. “And they were like you’re playing football. We want you on the football team. And she was like, me?”
A’jaLynn did play football, with the boys, in the 8th and 9th grade. But she found her true calling in the weight room. And it’s been quite the award-winning haul.
A’jaLynn Bostic has won state titles all four years of high school, including this week, when she set a Girls Powerlifting State Championship record in the bench press at 325 pounds, another record in the squat at 550 pounds, and another record in the deadlift at 530 pounds. And the combined total of 1,405 pounds was another state record for the 5’1″ powerhouse.
“This last one I was like a ball of emotion,” her mom said of the Texas High School Women’s Powerlifting Association Championship held Wednesday at the Bert Ogden Arena in Edinburg, Texas. “I didn’t know what to do. I was crying. I was laughing. I was cheering.”
“Going into something it’s like me vs. me,” A’jaLynn said of weightlifting competitions. “That’s how I think about it. I don’t want to go in there and like, I’m gonna beat this person. No. I’m just going to beat myself.”
“I don’t know how to count the weights,” A’jaLynn joked while warming up on the bench press. “Whatever they put on the bar, I just go with the flow.”
Going with the flow has made A’jaLynn a four-time state champ and a South Garland High School Titan legend. And now people are talking to her about maybe making a run at qualifying for the Olympic team. She hasn’t made up her mind just yet.
“I think I just wanna be a normal person,” she said. “Go to college and not have everyone in the world know who I am.”
Until that decision is made, and now that everyone in the powerlifting community does know her name, you’ll probably find A’jaLynn in the weight room, working on another personal best, and just being A’jaLynn.
“I think it’s giving her confidence to be who she is,” her mom said.
“I’m just like everyone else. I’m just strong. And a little crazy, but that’s it,” she said, laughing.
With a crazy, strong, promising future in her sights, too.