The weight room at Barron Collier High School is a lot busier these days and the students you’ll find here aren’t ones you might have typically found in the past.
Female students who have never pumped iron before are now perfecting their “clean and jerk” lifts for upcoming meets on the school's girls' weightlifting team
“We used to kind of joke it was like the Island of Misfit Toys. We have every girl. We have the most elite athletes in the school, some of our most decorated athletes, to the girl who never thought she would be on a high school sport,” said Barron Collier’s Weightlifting Coach Melissa Jackson.
Jackson laughs that it took about a dozen years of her pleading to get girls weightlifting to Collier County.
And students like 16-year-old Chloelle Altaratz are happy it finally did. She works out every day, trying to lift more than the day before.
“I don't play team sports. I'm not a big fan of team sports,” she said. “That's why I joined weightlifting.”
Altaratz figured it could help her performance in track and field. She says the benefits went far beyond improving strength and speed.
“It's given me so much mental clarity and helped me problem-solve almost like if I'm having a bad day lifting. I don't just quit. I sit there. I fix the problems. Especially with this sport, it’s not just strength. It’s technique. So you really have to sit there and figure out what you’re doing wrong.” said Altaratz. “Even in like school, it's helped me problem solve and like sit there and get it done.”
When schools got the green light to add girl’s weightlifting to their roster of school sports last year, Coach Jackson says she already had girls lined up ready to give it a try.
“It wasn't too hard to convince. Some, they don't like the uniform, but once they get over that, they realize it's fun,” said Jackson.
In its first year, the Barron Collier team found competitive success winning the district championship and two athletes placed in the top 20 at state competition. Jackson says she has loved watching these young women really enjoy the sport.
“A couple of the girls you know hit a big weight and or jump a weight and they cheer for each other and they all will stop. The whole meet will stop and watch each other so it's been cool to watch,” said Jackson.
And Chloelle is now watching the accomplishments of women weightlifters around the world.
“All my Instagram feeds are all lifters -- all like Olympic accounts.”
Daniel Camargo, a Senior International Coach for USA Weightlifting says competitive weightlifting is no longer a male-dominated sport. “More women compete in the most prestigious tournaments at the local and national level than men,” said Camargo.
And without a doubt, female celebrities who showcase their strength training routines on social media have helped boost the sport to women who might not have considered it. Strength training with weights ranked as one of the top trends in fitness last year, according to a survey by the American College of Sports Medicine journal.
“As you get older people tend to lose muscle mass and bone strength and I think once people started hearing about that and like the benefits of strength training, they started going into it and then like there's this whole like gym community on like tick tock and stuff and it just like kind of accelerated all of that, which is like really cool. So, I think kind of like a mob thing like everyone started doing it,” said Altaratz.
In Collier County, 140 girls are already competing in weightlifting. Barron Collier says its team is growing. They just won districts last week and would love to win the state title as well.
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