A little iron with summer break
Some area high school athletes will be a little busy in the coming weeks getting in prime shape for the start of the fall sports practices.
A few others already have a bit of a jump on them.
MEMBERS OF the Coeur d’Alene-based Heart and Barbell Club competed in the USA Weightlifting national championships June 22-25 at the Georgia Convention Center in Atlanta, with three even bringing back some accolades.
Shay Carlock, a rising senior at the North Idaho STEM Academy in Rathdrum, finished third in the 16-17 year-old girls division for lifters between 152 and 165 pounds.
Carlock, who also doubles as the team’s coach, competed in the 2016 Youth Pan American Games for Team USA, finished ninth at the Youth World Championships, won 12 medals at nationals and holds 18 state records.
“It’s a pretty big deal just to get to nationals,” Carlock said. “The first couple of years, I competed in the 15-and-under division and finished second.”
This time, it was a little different, not because of anything she did.
“They’re a lot more competitive at that age,” Carlock said. “I was pretty happy with third.”
Participants were judged on two lifts, the snatch and the clean and jerk, with competitors getting three attempts on each.
At first, Carlock — who played Junior Tackle football — just wanted to keep up with the boys on her team so she joined Coeur d’Alene Crossfit with her mom, Vicki.
“I just wanted to get stronger,” Carlock said. “The boys were passing me. I started doing Crossfit with my mom, who was a police officer. Through her work, she started to find that she enjoyed it. During that time, I started to enjoy weightlifting and found that I enjoyed competing.”
Shay Carlock found that in the Crossfit training, she wasn’t alone in her training either.
“It’s a community, and that’s what I really like about it,” Carlock said. “It’s a group. It’s not just coming into a gym and working out. There’s some accountability to it that you don’t have by going to a gym by yourself.”
THE CLUB, which started in 2015, had four competitors compete at nationals, with Tyler Carlock — Shay’s brother — along with Ethan Jolley and Vince Russo also competing in Atlanta.
“That was the goal with team weightlifting and building that sense of community,” Shay Carlock said. “When we first started, I’d come in and lift by myself. Eventually Ethan started coming and more and more kids started coming in and thinking it was really cool and something they wanted to do. Now, we’ve got eight or nine kids that are pretty consistently coming to the gym.”
And after some encouragement, that included Tyler Carlock, who finished fourth in the 14-15 year old division between 165 and 198 pounds.
“My mom and Shay got me to try Crossfit a couple of times,” Tyler Carlock said. “Then, I started lifting a little bit, and it kind of went from there. I enjoy it.”
Tyler will be a junior at Lakeland High in the fall.
“I used to play football and basketball, but kind of faded from those,” Tyler Carlock said. “I just went to nationals to have fun, and ended up doing really well. After that, I know I’ve just got to keep training and getting better each day.”
Jolley, who finished seventh in the 14-15 year-old 128-139 pound division, will be a sophomore at Coeur d’Alene High in the fall.
“I was really nervous going into nationals,” Jolley said. “I’ve never competed in a big national competition like that before. Standing on the stage, and having that many people staring at you and knowing they’re filming, it was a lot to take in.”
The group trains on Tuesday and Thursdays at 3 p.m. at Coeur d’Alene Crossfit, with addition training on Saturday mornings.
“It’s not super hard to find kids that are interested in doing this,” Shay Carlock said. “But it is hard to find kids that have the kind of commitment that it takes to be successful. There’s a lot of hard days that come that you’ve got to work through. There’s no participation medals here.”
Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at (208) 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JECdAPress.