Topic: News: Robin Byrd-Goad Coaches Gymnast/Weightlifters

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Robin Byrd-Goad Coaches Gymnast/Weightlifters

By Karen Rosen

Newnan — When the girls from Robin's Sports Academy arrived at the 2006 AAU Junior Olympic Games, in their teal leotards and sparkly sweatsuits, they looked like a bunch of gymnasts who had mistakenly wandered into the weightlifting competition.

"We were teased because we were so glitzy," coach Robin Byrd Goad said. "We showed up with some style."
 
And plenty of strength and technique, too. Although they truly are a bunch of gymnasts — albeit ones who took up weightlifting a year ago — the RSA team left Hampton Roads, Va., last month with the overall girls title as well as the 13-and-under championship.

The seven girls won four golds, two silvers and one bronze medal. Goad's daughter Sydney, 9, was named "best lifter" because she was the only girl at the Junior Olympics who could clean and jerk more than her body weight. Sydney lifted 22 kilograms (48.4 pounds), about 3 pounds more than she weighed.

Goad calls them "powerhouses on the platform, cute little pixies that love the fact that they are strong young girls."

Goad, 36, has championed weightlifting since she took up the sport herself as a 12-year-old gymnast. She competed in the first Women's World Championships in 1987, won a world title in 1994 and was a 2000 Olympian when women's weightlifting made its Olympic debut in Sydney — she says it's just a "coincidence" her daughter shares the city's name, but maybe "a little bit of a premonition."

Goad recently came out of retirement to place second at the national championships at 48kg (105.6 pounds) and help Coffee's Gym of Marietta clinch the national title. She's now aiming for the 2008 Olympic trials in Atlanta.

"It's going to be an awesome experience for the girls I train to see me doing that," Goad said.

Goad, who is married to five-time Olympic trials weightlifting qualifier Dean Goad and has three children, started coaching the next generation of weightlifters in August 2005 after some of the girls expressed interest.

Hailey Scott, 10, who won the gold in the 48kg division, said her friends "think it's strange" that she's in the sport. "They're like, 'Why do you do weightlifting?' I say, 'Because it's fun.' "

It's also empowering for young girls. "No one bothers me any more," Hailey said.

Kyle Pierce, a professor at LSU Shreveport who has studied young weightlifters, scoffs at the belief that lifting stunts children's growth.

"Weightlifting doesn't make you any shorter than basketball makes you tall," he said. If it is done properly, he said, "you don't seem to see the injuries that you think you would find."

Coaches have control because they pick the weights the kids will lift. The sport's etiquette is also a positive factor.

"At a weightlifting competition," Pierce said, "if a kid misses the weight, they'll still clap for him. In baseball, if the ball goes between their legs, all the kids and parents want to kill them."

Goad said it wasn't hard to persuade parents to put their daughters into weightlifting.

"I think now parents aren't afraid for their girls to be in an offbeat sport," said Goad, who has a T-shirt that says in pink writing, "Lift like a girl."

"It is not a sport that puts on heavy bulky muscle. It is a sport where you compete in a weight class you naturally grow into."

Stacy Ferguson said her daughter Lauren, 9, "was more interested in lifting than doing gymnastics. I don't know why — she just did. But she loves it."

None of the girls has accomplished as much in gymnastics as in weightlifting, but most have stayed with both — although they had to move to another gym for competitive gymnastics since Robin's Sports Academy now fields only a weightlifting team.

"This is more technique and strength, and gymnastics is more flexibility," 12-year-old Mary Noreika said.

"It uses the same muscles," said Abby Cowdell, also 12, "and it shows you how to work out and go for all you can and never to stop trying."

Courtney Cowdell, 10, said weightlifting helped her with cheerleading. "They thought it was pretty cool," she said, "that I could lift someone up."