On Feb. 13, Keys lifters made a statement in Lakeland at the FHSAA 1A State Championships in girls weightlifting. The island chain qualified four athletes for the big show and every single one returned a state medalist. Out of over 120 teams competing, both Keys teams cracked the top 10. Marathon finished in the traditional competition in a multiteam tie for seventh and Coral Shores finished 10th. In Olympic lifts, which rely more on the perfection of form than traditional, the Dolphins and Hurricanes tied for eighth, a testament to the sound fundamentals coached by Marathon’s Jessie Schubert and Coral Shores’ Erin Hamilton.
Coral Shores had just one qualifier, but senior Vanessa Gabriel made the most of it. Competing in the Unlimited category, Gabriel struck gold twice, earning the top place in both the traditional and Olympic competitions. To earn dual gold medals, Gabriel combined three impressive lifts. She began with a 135-pound snatch, which put her in a tie for second as the athletes entered into lift number two, the clean and jerk. The clean lift is the most important of the three, as it is used in calculating the winner of both competitions. Gabriel PRed with a 200-pound lift, the best of the field, to place her on the top spot of the podium with a combined total of 335 pounds – besting the second-place finisher by five pounds in the Olympic event.
Next, Gabriel would pull off another PR on the bench, lifting 185 pounds to tie for the lead with a combined total of 385 pounds in the traditional event. To determine the winner of a tie in weightlifting events, the lighter athlete is given the advantage, and Gabriel’s lower bodyweight put her atop the podium in the traditional event, too. Within the span of a few hours, Gabriel became a two-time state champion.
Marathon qualified a trio of lifters this season, including three-time state champ Justice Lee Isom. Lee Isom started off with a PR-matching 175-pound snatch lift to tie for first. She then added a 205-pound clean and jerk for 380 combined pounds in the Olympic competition. That total, while fourth best in any weight class, was not the top total in her 183-pound division, giving Lee Isom a silver medal in the Olympic category and a disadvantage heading into the traditional event.
With a 30-pound deficit to overcome, Lee Isom left it all on the line for her final lift as a Lady Fin. She easily cleared 175 on the bench press, then scratched at 185. Instead of retrying 185, the steadfast senior added five pounds to her bar and was good for a 190-pound PR bench press and a second silver medal.
Junior Adelle Bainbridge made waves in her first year on the weightlifting team at Marathon, and a state berth would have been a perfect end to her debut season. But Bainbridge, who competes at 154, is not one to be satisfied with anything but her best. The first-time qualifier made the top 10 in both events and earned a fifth-place medal in the Olympic competition by combining a 125-pound snatch lift with a 165-pound clean and jerk. Bainbridge’s 130-pound PR bench press helped boost her to ninth place in the traditional event.
Senior Ella Evans is not new to the state competition, and her 155-pound bench press is particularly impressive given that she competes in the 119-pound class. Evans added a 145-pound clean and jerk for 300 total pounds in the traditional event, where she won bronze. Evans’ total was just shy of a state title in a competition in which first and third were separated by a mere five pounds.
