Everyone in Jim Thorpe Area School District’s board committee meeting Wednesday night agreed on one thing: John McGowan’s powerlifting program is something to be proud of.

What they disagreed on was whether recent changes to weight room access threatened it.

Kristi Karnas, whose son Chase is an 11th-grade varsity football player and powerlifter, told board members that families fear the program is being sidelined and Coach John McGowan is being pushed out.

“John McGowan has been coaching Jim Thorpe for 42 years,” Karnas said. “I believe it’s the biggest sports program in the school. This is not a new or struggling program that needs someone to come in and rescue it. It is a program that has been built, refined, and proven for more than four decades.”

The dispute centers on a proposal to expand weight room access to all student athletes, not just powerlifters. High School Assistant Principal Avery Hower said a softball player had recently been turned away from the weight room.

“We had a softball student come to us and say, ‘I can’t go into the weight room. I was denied access because I’m not a powerlifter,’” the administrator said. “Having a student come to us and being denied access is not right.”

Administrators said they are not trying to eliminate the powerlifting program or remove McGowan. The goal, they said, is simply to create a schedule that allows other sports teams to use the facility.

Powerlifting Success

The numbers she cited are hard to argue with. The Jim Thorpe Olympians powerlifting team claimed the Pennsylvania High School Powerlifting Association state championship in 2025, scoring 79 points and tying Parkland, a significantly larger school, for the highest team score in the entire competition. The 2026 state championships were hosted at Jim Thorpe High School, drawing 26 schools from across Pennsylvania.

At the national level in Omaha, Nebraska, sophomore Michael Solt won the national title in the 231-pound weight class, and Colton Steigerwalt earned third place in the 116-pound class at an event with more than 400 competitors. State Rep. Doyle Heffley visited the weight room and presented the team with an official citation from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

“These students are representing Jim Thorpe at a level worthy of recognition by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth,” Karnas said.

The program also generates significant revenue. Karnas said a major meet weekend brought in $30,000 over two days, with $21,000 taken home by the program to fund equipment, uniforms, travel and competition fees; all managed by McGowan and parent volunteers.

Stricter access

The district also recently revoked key card access for volunteer coaches across all programs; a security policy that administrators said had been on the books for years but not enforced. Because McGowan’s volunteer assistants had been using those cards to access the weight room after hours, the revocation hit the powerlifting program particularly hard and became tangled in the broader controversy.

“The volunteers’ badges got shut off, and that’s been a policy,” High School Principal Ryan Delong said. “If they’re not a district employee, they don’t get access. We haven’t followed those rules. So things have gone to the wayside, and now we are following those rules that were put in place many years ago.”

Karnas pressed administrators on several fronts, including why powerlifters are not invited to Olympic Night, the school’s annual recognition event for athletes.

“I would love for them to just get that recognition,” Karnas said. “Just to say, ‘Hey, this is our senior lifter, Michael.’ You know what I mean.”

Superintendent Robert Presley acknowledged the point.

“I would absolutely agree with you that that’s recognition that is well deserved,” he said. “It is well deserved and it is overdue.”

Karnas also raised safety concerns about opening the weight room to unsupervised students unfamiliar with proper technique.

“When we have 42 lifters and we want to put all the other people in there to lift at the same time, it becomes unsafe,” she said. “They go in there, they put on as much weight as they can, they’re screaming at each other, and it’s going to get bad. I’ve seen it.”

Administrators said any expanded schedule would require a paid district employee to be present as a supervisor, and that McGowan’s program would retain its own dedicated time slot. They also noted that the feasibility study currently underway includes a proposal to expand the size of the weight room, and the wrestling room, if construction takes place at the high school.

Despite the tension, there was no dispute about the coach himself.

“There’s never been a conversation about him leaving,” Presley said. “It’s not an issue about Coach McGowan or about the program itself. The conversation has been: how do we get that weight room open to all students?”

Karnas acknowledged the distinction but said the families’ fears are real regardless.

“If there’s a documented safety concern, I’d love to know what it is,” she said. “If there’s a liability concern, please explain. But there is no documented problem. Please do not create unnecessary obstacles for a coach who has successfully built this program for more than four decades. This program is not a problem for Jim Thorpe. It is an asset to Jim Thorpe.”