Villanova University will host the 38th annual Special Olympics Pennsylvania Fall Festival from Nov. 13-15, with powerlifting organizers planning to move their awards ceremonies from the Villanova Room to Driscoll Hall. The move is part of a broader effort to change how and when powerlifting awards are presented.
“Our biggest thing this year is our award ceremonies,” Ashlyn Davis, a Fall Festival powerlifting organizer, said. “We’re gonna try to implement some new awards, timing and places. So we’re going to hold awards in Driscoll this year, rather than in the Villanova Room.”
Powerlifting is one of six sports at this year’s Fall Festival, alongside bocce, flag football, long-distance running and walking, soccer and volleyball. Villanova expects more than 1,100 athletes and 400 coaches from across Pennsylvania to take part in the three-day festival. More than 100 students on Villanova’s Special Olympics Committee run the event with help from Special Olympics Pennsylvania.
At powerlifting, the competition platform is where spectators see the lifts, but much of the work happens around it. Student volunteers help keep the event moving between attempts, rack weights and play the songs competitors walk out to.
Those responsibilities give students a role in both the meet’s operation and the room’s atmosphere. Villanova expects about 1,500 students to volunteer through Inclusion Crew across the festival, with roles in competition, awards and ceremonies.
“I think powerlifting just brings, like, a safe space for a lot of athletes,” Davis said.
For Davis, creating that space depends on the people who show up throughout the weekend, from the students working the competition to the spectators cheering between lifts.
“So just the support of the community is really huge to the committee, and my fellow assistants,” Davis said. “And just everything and everyone coming together to bring positive energy is just so huge in what we need in powerlifting.”
The festival will use both Villanova’s main campus and its Cabrini campus. The weekend also includes a Unified Sports home run derby, yard games and health screenings through the Healthy Athletes program.
The annual Victory Jamboree is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Dixon Center on the Cabrini campus.
For the powerlifting committee, the awards change will give this year’s competition a different finish.
After the lifts are complete, the committee plans to bring competitors together in Driscoll Hall to recognize their performances. It will be the most visible change for people who have attended the competition before, and it will give the volunteers who help run the meet one more chance to cheer on the competitors they’ve worked with throughout the event.
