Payton Mangay-Ayam overcomes early season injury to finish senior season as state champion

BRADENTON, Fla. (WWSB) - This week’s ABC7 Athlete of the Week is Payton Mangay-Ayam of the Braden River High School (BRHS) girls weightlifting team.

She’s a senior and newly crowned state champion along with her teammates. It’s the team’s first time claiming the top prize in the state in school history, but Payton also is an individual state champ on her own too.

She says her true feelings about both accomplishments hasn’t fully settled in for her just yet.

“It still feels pretty surreal,” Mangay-Ayam said. “I would say it kicked in after Jordan [Coach Borges] pulled us aside and was like you guys actually did it. He pulled me aside separately and said you really did it after four years. I shed a couple of tears.”

Mangay-Ayam was BRHS’s number one lifter by snatching 145 pounds and lifting 190 pounds in the clean and jerk category. She’s more grateful that anything that she was able to just finish this journey at all.

“Having to face an injury at the beginning of the season, I definitely didn’t think there was going to be a chance for me to win it anymore,” Mangay-Ayam said.

Mangay-Ayam says she worked extremely hard in physical therapy to get back, and her teammates understand how tough this was for her mentally and physically physically.

“When you lift, it’s just you against yourself,” Angelina Nguyen, Mangay-Ayam’s teammate and friend, said. “It’s a mental load. If you can’t get over what you have inside your head, then you can’t lift.”

Someone who isn’t surprised at Payton coming back stronger than before is her head coach, Jordan Borges. He’s watched her grow and get better each day for the last four years, and he says that she is what perseverance is all about.

“She can change the temperature in the weight room,” Borges said. “If she comes in, she’s usually happy go lucky. It’s a lot of hard work we put in here.”

Mangay-Ayam has a message for anyone wanting to pursue this sport that she would would like to share. “Keep going, be dedicated, and be consistent,” Mangay-Ayam said.

Mangay-Ayam will be attending college at USF in Tampa. She won’t be on the weightlifting team there, but she plans to still do this as a recreational activity.