PAC sophomore takes second at Strongest Man competition

Palo Alto College's Strength Society put its training and hard work to the test at UTSA's fourth annual Strongest Man Competition Saturday.

Eleven members of the Strength Society competed against 35 students from the University of Texas San Antonio, University of North Texas and Rice University to see who would be named the strongest man.

Michael "Big Mike" Omyejiuka of UTSA was named the strongest man in the competition with 90 overall points in seven events.

Twenty-one-year-old Anthony Rodriguez, a kinesiology sophomore at Palo Alto College, won second place with 68 points.

Jesse Medellin of UTSA won third place with 63 points.

UTSA's Daniel Johnson won a sudden death round, putting him in fourth place and leaving his team member David Noell in fifth place.

To break of a tie of 62 points, a sudden death round forced the two to hang from a bar for as long as possible.

Before the competition, team members anxiously waited as they weighed in and downed last-minute protein shakes.

As kinesiology freshmen Eric Ximenez, 20, downed his vitamins with a protein shake, he said, "I need my vitamins because I have to work after this; I'm going to need the energy."

After the team stretched to "get the blood going," coach Juan Aguilera gave the team a pep talk.

"You have to get serious," he said. "Close your eyes and start going over the position, so when they say go, you've already done it in your mind."

Seven events were split into two rounds. First was bench press, iron cross and yoke squat. After a lunch break was the tire flip, truck pull, keg relay and farmer's walk.

Participants vie for the highest number of repetitions at 225 pounds in the bench press.

At seven repetitions, Jason Flores, a 25-year-old kinesiology major at UTSA who trains with the Palo Alto team, prevailed.

"I had a little more in me," he said. "It was probably just nerves."

The iron cross event requires a participant to hold two 10-pound axes extended to the sides for as long as possible.

Liberal arts sophomore Sam Zamarron, 28, said, "My job isn't to place. My job is to do better than I did last year."

Zamarron not only beat his time from last year — 2:39 — he held the iron crosses for 3:31. He was awarded one of the axes for the longest time in this competition.

The yoke squat is an event in which competitors squat 600 pounds as many times as they can.

The weight increased from last year's 550 pounds giving some of the team some trouble.

Kinesiology sophomore Luis Baerga, 25, reached 44 squats, two more than he did last year.

"I was going for 50 reps," he said when he finished.

"I thought it was going to be easier than that," Baerga told his coach.

Aguilera responded, "Always think it's going to be harder."

During the second round, participants had two minutes to flip a 400-plus-pound tire across a 50-yard course.

Ximenez at 51 seconds scored the highest among members of Strength Society but not high enough to take the event.

The truck pull requires contestants to wear a harness connected to the bumper of a full-sized Dodge truck to pull it 60 yards.

Palo Alto's Rodriguez got the best time in the truck pull with 20.73 seconds.

The keg relay required participants to lift two kegs and two other objects weighing from 100 pounds to 160 pounds, lightest to heaviest, upright onto a flatbed in the fastest time.

The farmer's walk required each competitor to carry two 185-pound weights down a course within two minutes.

During the farmer's walk, Baerga traveled 76 feet, 10 inches — or about halfway — along the two-way course and ended with bloody blisters on his hand.

"Last time, I couldn't even pick it up," he said.

After all the pulling, lifting and pressing, the participants waited for the results, relieved to be finished.

The competition includes two pound-for-pound awards, announced by Michael Cox, UTSA's strength and conditioning coach.

Matt Jones from Rice University won the award, and second place went to Daniel Treviño, computer maintenance sophomore at St. Philip's College.