BUTLER TWP — From sequinette to strong physique, dancing to posing — Theresa Ivancik is living her dream.

The 2001 Butler graduate enabled her grandfather to live one of his at the same time.

A sequinette and dance team member in high school, Ivancik took a job at Butler Health and Fitness in 2001 and was looking through a muscle magazine one day.

“I decided I wanted to look like that,” she said. “and I’m a very goal-oriented person.”

Once she learned of the necessary adjustments to diet, Ivancik originally tabled the idea of getting into bodybuilding.

Seven years later, she was all in.

“I always stayed in shape. I just decided to go for it. You have to commit to the lifestyle,” Ivancik said.

She began formally training to be a bodybuilder in 2008.

Competing at the Pittsburgh show in 2010, Evancik placed third out of three women in her division.

“I was nervous, not very confident,” she said. “The posing, being on stage, all of that was new to me. But that experience pushed me harder to get better.

“I knew I had to work on a few more things.”

That show was memorable to Ivancik, however, because she was able to talk her grandfather — then 83-year-old Pete Ivancik — to get on stage and pose with her.

The elder Ivancik has been active in the gym his entire life. Now 87, he and his wife, Muriel, 85, still go to the gym three days a week.

“His lifelong dream has been to pose at a show,” Ivancik said of her grandfather. “He’s been lifting since his Navy days. They even gave him a ‘most inspirational’ award at that (2010) show.”

That award is on display in her grandparents’ living room.

“I look at it all the time,” Pete Ivancik said. “It’s proof that I did it. I’m very proud of that moment.

“When I was younger, we didn’t have these facilities that exist today. We didn’t have those places to go. I had my weights in the cellar and went down there to work out. I scrounged up all the equipment I could.

“I can still do 250 pounds,” the 5-foot-9, 210-pounder declared.

Ivancik established three goals for herself in bodybuilding — open up a gym, have her own line of protein products and get her pro card.

With partner Jeff Harlan, she accomplished the first two. She’s still working on the third.

Competing at a pro qualifier junior national show in Chicago in 2011, she finished fifth. Ivancik placed second in the Pittsburgh show that same year and won a competition in Allentown.

She placed second in the Pittsburgh show this past May and placed third at a national show in Las Vegas in July. To get a pro card, she must finish first or second at nationals.

Ivancik is competing in another national show in Florida this November.

“I’m close. I know I’m going to get there,” Ivancik said. “Part of this is muscle maturity. At 30, I’ve been the youngest woman in a number of these competitions. Most of the women I’m up against are 35 or older.”

Her ultimate goal is to qualify for Mr. Olympia, an invitational that accepts only the top pro bodybuilders in the world.

One thing Ivancik has is support. She has more than 30,000 followers on Facebook “and I never hear anything negative from any of them. I derive a lot of positive energy there.”

Her grandparents are in her corner as well.

“We’re proud of her. We’re totally supportive of what she’s doing,” her grandmother said.

“I’m with her 100 percent,” Ivancik’s grandfather said. “Watching her progress and physical maturation over these years has been rewarding.

“She’s come so far. I hope she sticks with it.”