Topic: News: Kelly Lynch: A normal life isn't easy

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Kelly Lynch: A normal life isn't easy
Teen among top women's weightlifters

Her auburn hair hangs down to her broad shoulders. Like many girls, Lynch hates revealing her weight. She once read in a health book that her size — 5 feet 5 and 150 pounds — is considered overweight. She’s not. How can a person be fat if she can clean-and-jerk 242 pounds and snatch 176? Lynch set those two records in December in the national school-age category (17 and under).

Still, even some peers recognize Lynch more for her school fundraising than her weightlifting. Earlier this school year, Lynch, a junior at Northwest, was collecting money with a fellow member of the Acts of Kindness Club. Lynch hardly knew him, and he definitely didn’t know the real her.

“This other kid came by and asked me how weights were going,” Lynch said. “And he’s like, ‘You’re the weightlifter? You don’t look like you lift weights.’ ”

He probably didn’t catch Lynch featured inside last month’s Weightlifting USA magazine. Nor did he know that Lynch recently won gold medals in Junior Nationals, School Age Championships and 23-and-under Nationals, even defeating college-age women.

“Kelly’s a bright star. She could be an Olympic champion if she wants to,” said Dennis Snethen, president of USA Weightlifting, the sport’s governing body. “If she still wants to do it, it’s got to be her. It doesn’t matter how bad everybody else wants something. She’s got to be the one.”

Already with the Olympic trials experience, Lynch knows by 2011, she must be within the top four overall women weightlifters to make the national team. Then, that American quartet must qualify to compete for the 2012 Games in London.

Lynch certainly strives for that goal; she said it’s been her dream since she was 12. That’s why she trains intensively for two hours, six days a week at Club Boris, a little storefront gym in Olathe.

There, coach Boris Urman paces the floor, watching the technique of his athletes. He rarely corrects Lynch, who always works from the last platform in the back of the room. She may be his most recognized champion, but Urman wants more out of Lynch.

“It’s not enough,” Urman said. “We can’t improve.

“To be a great athlete, you have to give up something. If not, you’re just enjoying, having fun.”

Urman’s practice-first-live-later attitude has not softened a bit the last five years.

Back then, Lynch was a shy 11-year-old when her older brother, Kevin Jr., took up weightlifting with Urman. Dad thought, why not Kelly, too?
“Are you serious?” Lynch incredulously responded to her father. “I’m a girl!”

But Kevin Lynch knew Urman would be good for Kelly. Before defecting to the United States, Urman trained Russian Olympic-bound weightlifters. Surely, he could work wonders for the confidence and athletic abilities of an 11-year-old girl.

At first, Lynch did not say a word to Urman. She was frightened. Lynch could barely understand his deep, gruff Russian accent. Plus, Urman was a perfectionist. He pushed her with rep after rep, allowing no free pass just because she was the baby of the bunch.

“I remember when she first started,” Snethen said. “She caught your eye when you first see her. You can tell that she was very talented. A lot quicker and a lot stronger than the other kids. And I think she won most of those meets.

“I can see her making the Olympic team. She’s the front-runner of all the younger girls coming in. But can she last that long?”

Older brother Kevin, now a freshman at Kansas, eventually dropped weightlifting, but Kelly was hooked. Later in 2000, she met Olympian Tara Nott Cunningham, a former Blue Valley product and the first U.S. women’s weightlifting gold medalist.

Since then, Lynch has won seven gold medals among her American peers but has faced stronger competition overseas. Last year, Lynch finished ninth overall at the World Junior Championships in Minsk, Belarus.
Urman contends those European and Asian athletes are hungrier and stronger. And he also thinks Lynch doesn’t want to end up looking like them.

“She says the Russian weightlifters look like a man,” Urman said. “Sometimes she doesn’t want to go too far because she doesn’t want to look like a man.”

Not so, Lynch says. She knows that weightlifting is a mental sport and that there are just some plateaus she hasn’t reached yet.

“I could probably lift a lot more than I do, but I’m just not mentally able to,” Lynch said. “My technique isn’t 100 percent. It’s really close, but there are still a few things I need to do, and I’m not completely confident in myself to do it.”

To Urman, there’s only one way to tear down that mental block: Practice.
Urman wants two-a-days where Lynch comes in early before school and later that evening.

But Lynch wants a life.

She wants to see her boyfriend play football on Fridays. She wants to hang out and shop at American Eagle. And in two years, she wants to go to college in Colorado Springs, headquarters to USA Weightlifting, and share a dorm room with her friend, Natalie.

Nott-Cunningham can remember her days in those dorms. It wasn’t an enjoyable college experience. Her 9-to-5 was spent weightlifting, and for years, personal sacrifices were necessary to become an Olympian.

“You can’t just snap your fingers and be good at it. It’s hours and hours in the gym,” said Nott-Cunningham, who trained for both the Athens and Sydney Games. “I think it’s important for younger athletes to lead a balanced life, and it sounds like Kelly has a good focus ... but there comes a time when she’ll have to make a choice to how much she wants to commit to weightlifting.”

Urman wants Lynch’s commitment and for her to take college classes locally and train with Club Boris. Only then, he says, behind a rigorous schedule, can she compete internationally.

“It’s very hard to (have) spare time to be a great athlete and go to the Olympics. You’re young only one time,” Urman said. “You can go to college anytime, but you can’t be world champion, Olympic champion, anytime, because age will take over.”

But once again, Lynch has her own plans. Someday, she’ll work in a children’s hospital and cheer up the patients. She also wants to be an anesthesiologist like her cousin Megan. And then there’s that dream about owning a trendy shop.

“I’ve got more to do than just weightlifting,” Lynch said. “I want to open my store and fill it with stuff that I like. I don’t think I ever will, but I always thought that would be cool.”

If Lynch truly decides to chase her weightlifting dreams, the life she longs for — dates on the Plaza and movies with friends — is the life she must forfeit. She does not know how all of her plans will work out, but right now, they don’t have to. Today, Lynch can have all of her goals.

The typical teenager and the potential Olympian — for now, her two lives are one.

“I’m kind of anxious about it because I don’t know how everything is going to pan out,” Lynch said. “I have no idea; I know that it will. I’ll figure it out. I figured it out so far. Just take one day at a time.

“I’m going to do it. It just might take a while.”

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Kelly Lynch’s strength resume
■ Ranked No. 1 school-age weightlifter in the 69-kilogram bodyweight division.
■ Holds two national school-age records; clean and jerk 110 kilograms (242 pounds) and snatch 80 kilograms (176 pounds), set in December at the School Age National Championships in Orlando, Fla. (Clean and jerk is a quick motion when weight is lifted overhead from shoulder height. Snatch is when weight is raised in a continuous motion from the floor to a position over the head.)
■ Gold medalist at the 2005 National Collegiate Champions (23 and under), and the Junior National Championships (20 and under)
■ Four-time gold medalist at the School Age National Championships (17 and under)
■ Three-time gold medalist at the School Age Pan American Championships and USA vs. Canada School Age Championships
■ Two-time USA Junior World Team member (2004, Belarus, finished ninth; 2005, South Korea, ninth)

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Here is a picture of Kelly Lynch Snatching from the USAW magazine. I'm not positive, but I think it is a 75kg snatch in the 69kg class at the 2005 Junior Nationals: