2007 Alberta Provincial
Bodybuilding & Figure Championships
Figure - Tier 1 Tall Class
One of the most compelling stories at this year's Provincials was the emergence of twins Terri and Tiffany Carroll onto the
competitive stage. They truly have 'the right stuff' to make it to the top - muscle size, shape, proportionality and above
all, the determination to get there. I'll let Terri narrate their bio so far...
"We are 24 years old and originally from Sydney, Nova Scotia (Cape Breton). We come from a middle class family, our
father being a former steel plant worker. Money was pretty scarce when we were growing up and we are the only ones in our
immediate family that had the opportunitity to go to university. We basically did everything together since we were born -
the same classes through elementary, jr. high, high school, and university. We even had the same averages in both our degrees
in university. In 2005 we graduated from the University of New Brunswick with our Bachelor of Education Degrees. We even did
our teacher placements at the same elementary school both teaching grade 3 across the hall from one another. The kids absolutely
loved it. We were labelled as the 'Twin Teachers'! We have been active our whole lives. When we were younger we spent our time
climbing trees together and building tree houses every chance we could get. We eventually got involved in volleyball and track
and field during jr. high and high school and immediately fell in love with both sports. We were both captains of our volleyball
team in high school, our nicknames being 'the blonde wall', and 'air jordan', because we could jump higher than everyone else.
We are almost five nine but were the two shortest girls on the team. We made up our height disadvantage by jumping higher than
everyone else on our team :) We both ran the 100 and 4x100 meters during our days in high school. We were the fastest short distance
runners then and set a few track records. We fell in love with bodybuilding when we were very young. I remember our father bringing
home the movie Conan with Arnold Schwarzenegger and from that day on we fell in love with weight training and Arnold himself.
Eventually we started reading bodybuilding magazines..(our parents would buy them for us with any extra money they had). We started
reading them when we were about ten years old, our biggest role models being Cory Everson, Marla Duncan, and of course Arnold
Schwarzenegger. I think we watched every one of his movies over a thousand times. We fell in love with the beauty of being strong and
started fooling around with weights at age 15. Our father bought us a weight bench and barbells for Christmas. We would work out together
in our attic for hours, it was our favorite thing to do. We started to lift weights a little more seriously when we were 18 and started our
first year in university. We wanted to compete at the time but did not have the funds to do so. We both worked pretty
much full time and attended university full time. We knew the value of education so had to put our dreams of competeing on hold.
In 2006 we moved to Fort McMurray to teach. Alberta has been great to us in every sense. The first thing we did when we moved
here was find out where all the local gyms were. Once we got on our feet we started training very seriously and also got in
touch with Brian and Donna Logue. I mentioned our desire to
compete at our school and a fellow coworker told me that she knew
of great people we should get in touch with. I immediately googled them and knew that they were exactly who we were looking for.
We both knew how to train hard...we just had no idea of what to eat. The Logues were fantastic. They helped us with everything - truly experts.
We corresponded via email. It was the best decision we have ever made and owe it all to them. We thank them for all of our success.
Not only is their expertise amazing, they are also two of the most caring and honest people we have ever met. We will be clients of
theirs for years to come:) We recommend them to anyone who wants to make a change in their body. You will not be dissapointed!
We thank them from the bottom of our hearts! Our suits were designed by Jo Rogers. She is another amazing person we had by our
side during our whole time training for this show. She is an Australian bodybuilder and holds 7 national and 5 world titles in
bodybuilding. Her suits are amazing and designs them for both men and women. Her website is
www.styleonstage.com.au/. She is wonderful to work with, so caring and genuine.
We wanted to have suits designed by someone who has actually competed before...who knows how important your big day is and she was everything
and more than we expected. Training was pretty tough for Tiffany. She has a heart condition and also suffers from endometriosis.
One may notice that one of our few differences is that she is a bit smaller than I am. This is because of the health conditions
she has been suffering from for the past 3 years. Her immune system is not as strong as mine and suffers with pain during most of
every month. She was only recently diagnosed with endometriosis. We made the decision that we were't going to let it stop us. We were relieved
to finally find out what was causing her all the pain in her abdomen but at the same time made it very tough for her to train hard every day.
But this has been our dream since we were kids and I told her that I would not do it without her. It is "our" dream. I was with her
everday that she suffered and was the one who actually mentioned to the doctor to check to see if it was endometriosis. We are a team.
We can read each others minds most of the time and are each others best friend. Competeing at the provincials was an amazing experience.
It was so great to see such amazing athletes. John Dirks
put on a fantastic show. We had to chance to meet him and he is a wonderful person.
We would like to thank him and Dave Leung for putting on such a wonderful
show. Alberta's athletes were stellar. We are proud to represent Alberta.
This Province has be great to us. We have found steady employment here, teaching children is such a great job. We love helping kids and making them
feel and become successful. We really don't think there is any other job as rewarding. Residing in Alberta has given us the opportunity to persue
our dream. When we are not teaching we are working out on site in the field. I am currently working as a labourer out at Jackpine. It is just outside
of Fort McMurray. The oilsand work is great as well. I drive trucks and move furniture, shovel, etc. - the pay is wonderful. Tiffany did not work
on site this summer, deciding to go home for a few weeks to visit our family. Our future goals are to make it to nationals next year and are going to
put everything we have into training to make it to that show next year. Our long term goal is to make it to the Arnold Classic and Figure Olympia in
the near future. As long as our hearts beat we are going to try our best to make it to these shows. It will be challenging but we are up to the challenge.
It is what we were born to do. If they can do it we can do it. We want people to know that competing is something anyone can do and being in shape is
something that everyone deserves. Never let anyone tell you that you cannot do it. If we can do it anyone can do it!"
Take Care and God Bless,
Terri & Tiffany Carroll
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