BACKGROUND: My name is Colin F. Stark and, to put it simply, I love to lift weights. I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida and was born in Birmingham, Alabama. I attended San Jose Episcopal for elementary school, The Bolles School for middle and high school, and Florida State University for bachelors in Finance/Economics. I played a lot of sports, growing up, but always enjoyed the weight-based training more than some of the sports themselves. I started lifting weights in middle school, at about 85lbs, and started competing in weightlifting at age 16, in the year 2000 at 58.5kg/129lbs. By the end of my highschool stretch, I competed in 69kg/152lbs. When I went off to college at FSU, there were no facilities available for students to use that had bumper plates or quality bars – so I got into USAPL powerlifting. I had a knee issue, so really just focused on becoming a bench specialist – and was decent at that. After college, I went into work/career mode and didn’t touch weights again until 2017 – I was weighing a little over 200lbs, in terrible shape, and had just blown my L4/L5 disc while going to sit down in a chair. That was the event that prompted me to start lifting again, and getting back into proper physical shape.
FAMILY: My wife, Jenny, is a nurse practitioner and is also on her own fitness journey. I’m hoping it crosses into mine, at some point in the future – I’d love to compete, as a family! I have two children, my son’s name is Alex and my daughter’s name is Mallory. Mallory trains squats and pulls, and we’re working on getting her ready for overhead lifting. My parents have been hugely supportive of me getting back into sport, they’ve come out to practically all of my meets – it means a ton! I also couldn’t do this without the support of my wife and kids. What I do, and what I accomplish, is truly a team effort.
CAREER: I wear a lot of hats at the firm I work with. I’m a licensed advisor (series 7/series 63) but I don’t run my own book, I serve as a 2nd hand to the full book and manage our operations staff, along with in-house IT. I started up with them in 2009, when it was, essentially, 3 of us. We’ve grown quite a bit since then, and look forward to continuing to do so, over the coming years.