Benefield: Local weightlifter coming on strong

PETALUMA - It was hard to tell how heavy it was.

Athena Schrijver looked almost impassive as she hoisted a bar loaded with weight plates above her head.

Then I saw it. A vein above her right eye was pulsing a bit. There might be some strain here.

Then I heard it.

The cacophonous clatter of the weight bar and plates hitting the rubberized floor mats after Schrijver had completed her lift and dropped the bar to the floor. The din was deafening.

I guess Schrijver, who will start Maria Carrillo High in the fall as a freshman, can lift a fair bit of weight.

“My friends from school don’t really know what I do,” she said. “It’s kind of ‘Oh you are a bodybuilder’ or ‘Oh you lift heavy stuff.’”

In fact, Schrijver, who has been weightlifting for about four years, is the new American record holder for her age and 127-pound weight class.

“No 15-year-old at that body weight has ever lifted more,” said her coach, Freddy Myles.

Which is all the more amazing when you consider that Athena is 14. She is at the lower end of her age bracket.

“She was the top lifter for the whole age group … she was beating kids who were 17 - a pretty dominating performance,” he said.

Schrijver set the mark at the National Youth Championships in Minneapolis, Minn., last month.

The series of snatch and clean and jerk lifts put Schrijver as a repeat national champion and helped lead the 14-15 team from Myles Ahead Weightlifting of Petaluma to a national championship. Mia Zechowy of Santa Rosa was also a national champion at 105 pounds and part of the under 15 medal winners.

Schrijver topped out with a snatch of 143 pounds and a clean and jerk of 187 pounds - both records.

“We had exceeded it in practice, both of them, but practice is different than competition,” Myles said.

“You have to be confident,” Myles said. “You only get three shots. You have to be able to display your best at that very specific, given time.”

And making a judgment on which weight to try on the first lift involves a bit of strategy. Miss it and you are not allowed to try a lower weight, but start too low and you might not be able to get high enough for the win.

“You have to open with something you can always make,” Myles said. “That’s a lot of pressure for the first time. A room packed with people, cameras on you and lights, it’s very stressful.”

Schrijver has a unique approach.

“I kind of black out when I go onto the platform,” she said. “I’m super focused and I kind of visualize the lift, pulling it off my hips and sticking it and standing back up.”

And while there are only two styles of lift, and to the uninitiated, they look pretty straightforward, it’s far from simple.

“The movements are pretty hard, kind of like gymnastics with a barbell,” Myles said.

Maybe that is why Schrijver, a former gymnastic, has taken to it.

Schrijver’s former gymnastic coach recommended four years ago that she take up weightlifting to work on her core and leg strength. It didn’t take long before she abandoned one for the other.

“She just took to it, immediately,” said Athena’s mom, Darlene Schrijver.

That left mom with some pretty immediate homework to do.

“I became a judge just so I could understand it better,” she said. “I had to get myself into it.”

What didn’t take any learning, only observation, was what the sport did for her daughter.

“It empowers her, she feels strong, she feels confident,” she said. “She walks around like ‘Nobody is going to mess with me because I’m so strong.’”

It makes sense to feel confident, what with a handful of first place medals around your neck and a new American record under your belt.

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield.