It’s been a big year for Special Olympics of Carbon County.

In early March, one of its athletes took the gold in powerlifting at the Special Olympics World Games. That same month, another local competitor and his father traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada to compete, and ultimately dominate, the Special Olympics National Bowling Championships.

Thanks in large part to those athletes’ successes, the program is set up to grow. And a longtime volunteer has been appointed to lead it into the future.

“People know who we are now,” Lisa Cooper, who took over as manager of Special Olympics of Carbon County in July, said.

Born and raised in Lehighton, Cooper started serving with Special Olympics in 2014. A former powerlifter herself, she started training in the sport around 2012. But Cooper never got the chance to lift competitively, as she tore her Achilles tendon three years later.

“It happens,” she said.

Cooper added that her husband always says she’s too competitive, so the injury might have been a blessing in disguise.

Cooper and her friend Melissa Bock ended up founding the regional Special Olympics’ powerlifting league in 2015. For their first year, Cooper said, a team of seven athletes worked simply on perfecting their form.

Then in late 2017, one of those athletes — Delina Rodrigues — was chosen at random to fill a spot on the U.S. powerlifting team for the international competition in Abu Dhabi.

When the March games were televised, Rodrigues’ hometown of Palmerton saw her struggle in the squat and bench press. “I cried,” Rodrigues said early this summer. “It was terrible, because I was struggling when I was lifting so much weight.”

The only way Rodrigues could qualify for gold was with a personal best in the deadlift, so she went for 220 and a half pounds — a half pound more that she’d ever lifted before. That extra weight earned Rodrigues two gold medals: one for the deadlift and another for overall lifted weight in her class.

“Delina (Rodrigues) going to world games has brought so much attention to our little community,” Cooper said.

Special Olympics of Carbon County intends to add at least four sports to the program next year: long distance walking and running, unified flag football, gymnastics and even snowboarding.

And while the program’s expansion is a good sign, Cooper noted, it also brings a fair amount of stress. As manager, Cooper oversees the entire Special Olympics of Carbon County program, which relies solely on volunteers and donations from the community. The program’s current offerings — bocce, bowling, powerlifting and track — run up a bill of around $11,000.

And like most volunteers at Special Olympics of Carbon County, Cooper has to balance her program duties with a job and personal life.

A Lincoln Technical Institute graduate, Cooper obtained an associate degree in architectural drafting after high school. Armed with a degree, she moved to Easton to work at an architectural millwork firm called Eisenhardt Mills. It was there that she met her husband, Kevin.

After 20 years at Eisenhardt, Cooper took on a remote position with the Connecticut-based Richard Anthony Custom Millwork. “I get up every morning and I can’t wait to go to work,” she said. When the Coopers decided to move back to Carbon, they fell “in love” with a home in Palmerton, she recalled.

Being a Lehighton Area High School alumna, Cooper said it was difficult to adjust to living in enemy territory. “When I grew up, there was a big Palmerton/Lehighton rivalry,” she said. But nowadays, you’ll see Cooper donning a blue Bombers shirt rather than a Lehighton jersey.

She’s still figuring out what it takes to oversee the Special Olympics of Carbon County program. “I haven’t really learned all of my (duties) yet,” Cooper said. Right now, her focus is on coordinating fundraising efforts and helping teams prepare for the start of fall season.

But at the end of the day, Cooper wouldn’t have it any other way. When asked what motivates her to tackle her mounting responsibilities head-on, she didn’t hesitate to answer “the athletes.”

“They come up, and they give it their all, all the time,” Cooper said.

If you want to support the Special Olympics of Carbon County, the program is hosting a fundraising event where the public can meet and paint with some of its athletes. It will take place on Nov. 9, but the location is still pending.

The program is also looking for volunteers. If interested in serving, contact Cooper by email at lisacooper1971@gmail.com.