Topic: News: Team Beaufort Looking for Sixth Championship

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Team Beaufort Looking for Sixth Championship
By Buddy Hughes

In today's sports vocabulary, the word dynasty can be tossed around way too much. But in this small corner of South Carolina, a sports dynasty has popped up in a room at Beaufort Middle School, where the Team Beaufort weightlifting team practices.

Team Beaufort has won five straight AAU Junior Olympic Games boys weightlifting national championships and will go for its sixth starting today in Virginia Beach, Va.

It's something that Team Beaufort coach Ray Jones never envisioned and described simply as "surreal."

"There are teams from all over the U.S. competing," Jones said. "There are bigger teams from large cities that get major funding and top of the line everything. Just to imagine that little Beaufort can compete, it's a real neat thing."

How has Beaufort been able not only to compete with the better, sometimes corporately funded teams from bigger cities, but win? By understanding the AAU system.

Team Beaufort not only has talented athletes, but they have enough to ensure that every weight class is covered, and that earns them points toward the champion.

"I don't think they understand the formula," Jones said. "The AAU is very youth friendly. These larger teams come in and they'll have elite-level athletes. Yet we compete where all of our kids count. We have all of those classes covered.

"They're scratching their head. This younger, smaller team keeps winning the title. I hope these teams don't figure it out."

Team Beaufort's weightlifters are determined to keep the bigger cities in the dark when it comes to winning titles. To do that, they are working as hard as they did for the previous five.

"It's no secret, really," said Team Beaufort weightlifter Michael Cook on the team's success. "We just train, do what we have to do, do our best and have fun. Same thing every year. We don't change our routine."

The having fun part is something that Jones said is a big part of the team's success. Jones and the team create an atmosphere where the don't put any pressure on themselves.

It's just one of the many factors that has propelled the team to its five-year title run.

"The No. 1 reason they're going is to enjoy it," Jones said. "If you go there and enjoy it, you perform really well. If they put pressure on themselves, they don't perform well."

Weightlifter Stefan Moser has made the most of his time on Team Beaufort.

After winning his second National School Age Championship on July 22-24, Moser earned a spot on the 2012 Olympic Developmental Squad.

Impressive considering he said the performance was not his best.

"I actually wasn't sure if I was going to make it or not," Moser said. "I didn't do as well as I could have at the School Age, but I guess they saw potential. It feels really great."

For Cook, this will be his last chance to compete for Team Beaufort, and he wants to go out the same way he came into it.

"Every AAU that I've been to, we won," Cook said. "This being my last one, I want it to mean something."

And what do Moser and Cook think about their well-financed competition from bigger cities? They are not impressed by the matching warm-ups they wear.

"I don't care about money," Moser said. "If you have money, that's great. You get a lot more suits. You get more equipment to work with in the gym. But I don't think that's really going to help you unless you have a lot of kids to use them."

Added Cook: "I look at it like this: We didn't need to wear matching suits the last five titles. It don't matter to me. Suit or no suit, we're still going to do the same thing again. Sure, it would make us look good, but nothing's going to change."

Cook got started in weightlifting because he could not find another sport that he liked and was hooked on it from the beginning.

"As soon as I started, I couldn't stop," Cook said.

The same could be said for Team Beaufort and winning championships.