I take no offense to what you say regarding the sw at all. Actually it has been very difficult to build it up out here. We do come from the East and we are part of the Metal Militia (hence metalmilitiababe...) Bill Crawford, Bill Carpenter, Mike Miller, the Grobeys, Sebastian Burns, McVicker, etc... are all of our friends and who we train with (if you know powerlifting then you know who these people are). Actually Bill Crawford is one of my very best friends. So, when you talk about meets on the East coast I understand - that is what we are working on bringing to the sw. So, as I stated before, if you want some help and advise regarding meets then let me know as I CAN hook you up.
One more thing and I am not going to get into a raw vs shirts thing but why do you need a meet that is raw, you can lift in a meet raw even when others are lifting with shirts. Actually that is what we make many of our team members do and we also have a number of them who will probably never lift in a shirt yet do meets that others are lifting in shirts. My friend, powerlifting is about hitting the numbers you are trying to hit weather raw or not. Even if you are going for records raw you can still compete in meets that have shirted lifters. Right now we have lifters that are going to compete in my husbands AFP Halloween Bench Bash that will most likely be getting American Raw records in their divisions (the majority of lifters in this meet will be shirted & one of them is going for an American Record shirted) . You can do this both in the UPA and APF. The only reason I see someone having an issue with doing a meet raw in a meet that has shirted lifters is that they may not walk out with a trophy, but like I said this is not about trophy hunting it should be about your numbers.
Me personally, I am ranked top 30 in the world in the 148's and 165's. I do not care who all is there or about getting a trophy, if I did then I would not compete at the meets I do where Janet Farone (another good friend of mine) is there who holds world records in the 114, 123 & 132 class - she always get the best lifter award and always walks away with the trophies. One more time it is about hitting the numbers I am going in there for and working my way up the world record latter.
Again, if you or anyone else who stops by this thread wants some meet info I will be more than happy to help out. My husband is the NM APF State Chair, I am the UPA State Chair for Colorado & NM, but have MANY connections beyond that all over the US and most of them actually are on the East coast.
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