PUMPING IRON PAYS OFF FOR ATHLETES
What do football lineman and cheer squads have in common? Lifting weights
BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. » While the spring sports season was less than 48 hours away, the lineman of the fall were looking six months ahead. It wasn’t just football players testing themselves against their competitors inside the Ballston Spa High School gym, however.
The annual Ballston Spa weightlifting competition brought together a dozen programs to measure their strength in three different stations, bench, squad and clean lifts at the midway point heading into the 2017 season. Among the football players competing were two girls athletes — a thrower and a cheerleader.
“Going into the weight room three days a week is tough on kids, especially through the long winter,” Saratoga Springs Coach Terry Jones said. “This is their first opportunity to come out and see if their hard work is paying off, but even more so it gives them the opportunity to get out here and get amongst kids that they compete against or meet kids from other schools.
“Every time we come here the kids always walk away with a very positive feeling about the day, not just in the way how they performed, but in the atmosphere, getting around the kids from other schools and really enjoying it.”
When the heavy lifting was complete, Shenendehowa captured it’s secondstraight title with 88 team points followed by Averill Park with 70, Colonie with 40, Ballston Spa fourth with 34 and Guilderland with 26. Saratoga had 24 points, CBA 10, Queensbury 7, Broadalbin-Perth 4, Gloversville and Amsterdam with a point.
Points were awarded from the top five place finishers within each of the seven established weight classes.
Jones believes in the lifting program for all athletes, not just his football lineman.
“You look at kids today compared to 20, 30-years ago high school athletes are bigger, their faster, their stronger, so if kids want to compete physically, just being talented and being an athlete isn’t always enough,” Jones said. “You need to be able to physically be able to compete against other kids. Along with that, as kids are bigger, faster, stronger the kids become more susceptible to injury if they can’t match that strength.
“That’s the biggest thing for us; we feel if kids are strength-wise in shape it’s going to help limit injuries throughout a long, tough season.”
Saturday wasn’t a day just for the football players competing in the trenches in the fall as Ballston Spa seniors Caitlin Whalen and Taylor Blanco took their turns lifting some iron.
“I used to be really heavy and fat and I was never good at running, but I was stronger, so that helped me a lot, lifting,” Whalen said. “I got into throwing because my track coach was like ‘You’d be a good thrower.’ I got into that and some lifting, lost weight and I got even more into lifting. I started my freshman year.”
The weight room has helped her throw her different implements farther.
“It helps you with your form because your legs, it helps you in the hip area and upper body, you have to use it as one,” Whalen said.
Lifting wasn’t new to Taylor Blanco.
“When I lived in Texas the school I went had a power lifting team and one of my friends told me I should join it, so I did and I’ve stuck with it since,” Blanco said. “They didn’t have one here, so I went in the weight room on my own, in cheer we work out a lot.”
Even without needing to push a competitor or throw an implement, Blanco has found lifting helpful as a Scottie cheerleader.
“With cheerleading, especially as a main base, you are lifting a lot of girls in the air and it’s lot of legs and stability,” Blanco said. “With blowing out my knee, I had to work a lot get my muscles back, it really pays off in the end with keeping me in shape and ready to do better things with cheer.”
Lifting has paid off for both, Whalen who will attend Adirondack Community College next year and Blanco who hopes to make the competitive cheer team at Elmira College.
“The (Elmira) coach knows my coach really well from cheer so she had been talking about it and I think when the coach realized how much I push myself she was like ‘This is someone I want,’” Blanco said.
Also turning heads Saturday was Shenendehowa junior Michael Shields and his overall mark of 1,100-total pounds, impressing the crowd that surrounded him when he lifted 405-pounds in the bench press, but again failing to clear 410 pounds.
“I think if I didn’t do the 405 (pounds) before I would have got it, but I went for 405 and that’s what I wanted to get,” Shields said. “Weightwise it doesn’t seem like much of a difference, but I think it’s the fact that I’ve never done it.
“It feels so much different because I know I can do 405, that’s the third time I’ve done it, but 410 I’ve failed twice before. I had a feeling that, 405, I didn’t even want to do 410, but I felt like I could because I had enough adrenaline, but sometimes it’s just too much.”
For the Plainsmen lineman, the winter work will help him throughout Class AA this fall.
“The stronger I am the easier it is to push the guy across from me,” Shields said. “If my squat and bench are both really high, that guy is not going to stand a chance, I’m just going to push him around.”