Rabun, Georgia: The Heterosexual Weight Lifting Capital of the U.S.

In the USA Weightlifting competition for the top high school weightlifters in America, 3 of the top 10 were from Rabun High School in Georgia.

So where is this high school, and how is it getting so many weightlifters?

Rabun County, Georgia, population 16,000, is in the far northeastern part of the state, near the Tennessee border. Mostly mountainous.  60% of the county is in the Chattahoochie National Forest.  It was the shooting location for the 1972 movie Deliverance, about city boys being terrorized by inbred hicks.

One of the horrors they inflict is anal rape, painting all country folk as gay rapists (this was the homophobic 1970s).

Billy Redden, who played the banjo-playing teenager, was a student at Rabun High at the time.  He couldn't play the banjo; the director just thought that he looked like an inbred hick. 

Aw, he was cute.

In 2010, the International Youth Theatre presented the play Billy Redden at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.

As far as I can tell, there's no connection.

Naturally, Rabun residents don't take kindly to how Deliverance portrayed their kin.  As inbred hicks?  As gay?  Horrifying!

It actually is home to the  Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, which  introduced the concept of "experiential education."  Students get credit for working in the community.  Foxfire Magazine began there in 1966 as a class writing assignment, and is now famous for covering Appalachian arts and crafts.

Rabun Gap is one of the few high schools in the U.S. to offer cirque (training in trapeze, acrobatics, and other circus arts).

When I looked for a photo, only girls appeared.  And this.  It's actually an Essex teenager who demonstrated "his world-class potential with a silver and three master's finals at the British Championships."  It doesn't say championship in what.

It's as close to a beefcake photo as you're going to find in Rabun, Georgia.









Back to Rabun County.  It is home to several camps, including Ramah Darom, for Jewish youth.

Here's one of the counselors, a Jewish boy from Alabama.  Can you imagine such a thing?

Fun fact:  Every photo of him that I could find on facebook, twitter, and instagram, he had his arm around a girl.  He wants us to know that he's heterosexual.











Ok, where is this high school that has all of the weightlifters?

Rabun County High is in Tiger, Georgia, a town of 300 with nothing else in it but two churches, a drive in theater, and a tourist attraction called Goats on the Roof.

 The principal and two vice principals include pictures of their wives and children. They really want us to know that they are heterosexual.

It offers the usual soccer, football, wrestling, tennis, and cheerleading, but there is a special weight training program, with its own dedicated coach (a picture of his wife and children, too).











Students are divided into Iron Cats (lots), Power Cats (a few), Super Cats (one), and Beast Cats (one).  Here's the Super Cat.  The only picture I could find where his arm wasn't around a girl.




















Every week they choose a Lifter of the Week.  This is Shawn, the lifter for Week 1 of the 2018-19 academic year (1100 pounds combined). He also plays football.

And his arm is usually around a girl.

See also: The Strongest High School Students in America