In their first-ever appearances on the world stage, they represented the red, white and blue – and purple - extremely well.
 
After unexpectedly winning a gold medal at the 2024 Powerlifting America Collegiate National Championship in mid-March, Grand Canyon University Club Powerlifting's Dawson Aaron showed it was absolutely no fluke by placing 5^th at the Fédération Internationale du Sport Universitaire World Powerlifting Championship in Tartu, Estonia Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, in just her third powerlifting meet of any kind, Aaron's GCU teammate, freshman Faith Anderson, placed 12^th in her weight class at the worlds earlier in the day. The finishes brought a climactic close to the Lopes' most successful powerlifting season ever.
 
Before leaving for Europe, Aaron remarked how all nine of his lifts needed to be perfect to have any chance to place high at the worlds. Unfortunately, he tested that theory in a painful way early on. After nailing his first two squats, Aaron felt a twinge in his quad muscle during the final squat and sprawled to the mat in pain. Despite that, his second squat of 252.5 kilograms earned him a bronze medal in that category.
 
However, he still had six lifts left in the competition, and a gimpy leg to push off with now.
 
"I strained it pretty bad on that the 3^rd attempt, so I had to go down (in my weight limits) in bench press," said Aaron. "Somehow, I still finished 4^th overall in that."
 
Aaron's final bench press of 167.5 kilos narrowly missed a bronze medal in that event.
 
Still, the hardest part for a bad leg remained.
 
"For my deadlifts, I had to switch to a completely different technique that I'd never done in a meet before," said Aaron. "Even with that, I ended up still hitting an all-time meet personal record."
 
Scaling down again but hitting all three deadlifts (the highest being 265) placed Aaron 11^th in that event, but more importantly kept him in the running for a top-5 overall spot, which he clinched with a total of 685 – over seven points better than the next-highest finisher.
 
Meanwhile, Anderson had spent the spring defying the odds in her rookie season and did it again in Tartu. The Lopes' soon-to-be-sophomore had just one career meet under her belt before heading to Reno, Nevada in mid-March, but came away finishing 3^rd in her 69kg category at nationals. Anderson wasn't supposed to get the call to go to Estonia, but when one of the top two automatic qualifiers at nationals declined, even with one less month to prepare, Faith got the call and took the bid.
 

Thursday, Anderson did much more than just "take it all in". While she started slow – Anderson had the 4^th-lightest squat weights in the competition – she nailed all three, including a career-high of 132.5 kilos in attempt #3. Anderson then gained steam by placing in the top 10 of the bench press with a personal-best of 75 kilos. Anderson then hit two of her three deadlifts – the best being 127.5 kilos – and narrowly missed finishing 11^th overall with a final total of 335.
 
"Based on the circumstances, we couldn't have asked for any better," said Aaron. "Faith was so pleased. Her day went better than expected, since she hit her highs in squat and bench – something she'd been trying to hit the past couple of weeks. As for me, after my injury, all I did was listen to worship music, and trusted God that He would use this for something good. Then to say that I was 5^th in the worlds after all of this? So much more than I could've dreamed."