TYLER, Texas — Powerlifting season is in full swing for professional athletes, as local high school students just wrapped the powerlifting state championships.
Saturday will be a different type of meet, still powerlifting, but in honor of Alavia Cleaver-Edwards, who died of a brain tumor just before her 3rd birthday.
"They found a benign ependymoma brain tumor at 10-months-old," LaTosha Cleaver, Alavia's mom, recalled. "It was not malignant, but it was recurrent. She had four brain surgeries. The first brain surgery was eight hours long, and it was the size of a baseball. And she had four surgeries after that, because it kept growing back in different parts of her brain."
After multiple surgeries, Cleaver was forced to make a decision.
"They really didn't know how to treat it because it was benign. It wasn't malignant," Cleaver said "But the last one grew in her brainstem and there's too many nerve endings, so it would leave her with no quality of life. I had to decide on quality versus quantity, and we let her go naturally two weeks before her third birthday.”
Cleaver is the assistant director of recreational sports at UT Tyler, but also a world champion powerlifter.
"I started lifting after I lost her." Cleaver said. "She passed away two weeks before her third birthday."
What started as an outlet, quickly became a way of life, and naturally.
"I've been doing this for, right at 10 years actually, last month," Cleaver said. "I started at 33-years-old. I actually walked into the YMCA gym when it was open, and my kids were little, and I would take them in there for daycare. They had a little gym in there and there was a trainer working in there, so I would peep in. I would see him and his guys over there lifting weights, and I was like, I'm gonna do it. And he was like, well, I need a girl for my team, my powerlifting team, you should join."
Ten years later, Cleaver holds six world records, nine national records and over 15 state records.
“When I go up to the platform to do my deadlifts, I dedicate those to my daughter," Cleaver said. "When I walk up to the platform, I point to the sky and people think I'm pointing to God but I'm pointing to my daughter because I want her to know that I have not forgotten her, and that I see her. And when I point my finger to the sky you know I'm about to bring it.”
This month marks the 20 year anniversary of Alavia's death, the reason behind the inaugural "Lift for Lavi" meet.
"I just didn't want the world to forget about her because she did exist,” Cleaver said.
The inaugural “Lifting for Lavi” meet begins at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 1, at the Raw Iron Gymnasium, located at 905 North Greer Boulevard in Pittsburg. All of all entry fees and donations will go to the National Brain Tumor Society.