June 2025 Athlete of the Month
By Del Moon, NSGA Storyteller
Faith O’Reilly, 82
Saguache, Colorado
Photo courtesy Faith O’Reilly.
Look anywhere online and you’ll see Powerlifting is having a moment.
Older women who powerlift have particularly captured the spotlight. Catherine Kuehn, 95, inspired the “Strong Grandma” documentary, and one Instagram video promoting the film racked up over 11 million views. Nora Langdon, who started at 65, has inspired countless people with her record-setting pursuits.
Powerlifting makes its sport debut at the 2025 National Senior Games presented by Humana in Des Moines, and 82-year-old Faith O’Reilly has the honor of being the oldest female registered for the event. Faith hails from Saguache, a town of 600 in southwestern Colorado where she owns a small rustic lodge for wayward travelers and recreation seekers.
“We pronounce it ‘Sa-watch’ you know,” she begins. Faith then talks about the beauty and recreation offered in the region, noting she is a past chamber of commerce president and a current tourism council member.
Her story then takes a sudden National Senior Games twist when she reveals she grew up in Des Moines and is excited to compete and see family and friends when she competes there for the 2025 Games. “I was born in St. Louis, but my family moved to Des Moines when I was four years old and I did my schooling in Iowa,” she explains.
Faith first began lifting weights while earning her law degree at the University of Iowa. “While I was in law school I kind of fell in with some people who were doing weightlifting, and they invited me to go to a powerlifting meet with them,” she recalls. “I was watching it and thought, ‘Well, I can do that.’”
Photo courtesy Faith O’Reilly.
She took up the sport and competed regularly throughout the Midwest and is proud to have won multiple Iowa state championships. Her career took her to Hamlin University in St. Paul, Minnesota to teach undergraduate law to paralegal students and criminal justice students. Her lifting diminished as she found less time due to the weight of her demanding schedule. After retiring in 2007, she was ready to flex again, moving with her weights to a tiny Colorado town to enjoy independence and fresh air.
Why Saguache? Faith says she followed up on a whim. “I used to travel around taking my granddaughter to all the national parks in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, and I just kept coming through this town Saguache,” she recalls. “It’s beautiful here, and I kept thinking, ‘That’s where I’m going to live when I retire,’ so that’s what I did. A little crazy, but it’s worked out pretty well for me.”
Powerlifting – Good for Seniors? Faith Thinks So.
Faith is excited that Powerlifting is now part of National Senior Games and says most people can benefit from it, including older adults. The research on resistance training agrees.
Faith notes her smaller (but sturdy) frame and says you compete in the appropriate weight and age groups. “It’s overall good for you physically, and as you age you can have problems with bone density and losing muscle tone,” she observes. “So this helps you stay fit. I still do a lot of the outdoor yard work and chores of the lodge myself.”
Faith has her own gym setup with special safety bars since there is nowhere and no one near her to train with, but says people should do it in a group setting. “Besides the workout, it gives you the chance to be involved in an athletic adventure, and the people that do this are a very open and friendly group of people. You make a lot of connections and get support.”
This will actually be Faith’s second National Senior Games. In 2023 she joined with her younger sister Ellen Przyuski and her childhood friend Margo Crosman in Pittsburgh to compete and win gold in the women’s 75+ Triathlon Relay. The “Fab Fem” team loved the experience and is coming back for more with a goal to finish faster, with Faith putting her college swimming experience to work for the water portion.
The Fab Fem 2023 Triathlon Relay team (left to right): Ellen Przyuski, Margo Crosman and Faith O’Reilly. Fem stands for Faith-Ellen-Margo.
She is quick to express gratitude to be able to participate in sports as she ages, because opportunities were slim for her growing up before Title IX. “My high school thought that team athletics were not good for girls. It wasn’t ladylike,” she says. “So my whole family gravitated over to horseback riding. I did a lot of competitive riding when I was a kid. It was called pony club but was really more like the Olympic horseback riding with the dressage, stadium jumping and open field jumping.”
Her Senior Games experiences have energized Faith’s spirit. “It’s really fun to see and interact with other people who are enjoying being more fit than the rest of our age group,” she says. “You know, the oldest person who competed in Pittsburgh was 103, so that gives me a goal.”
