Topic: News: Kari Davis Wins Pan Am Sub-15 Championships

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Hughes News & Views: Clark County Girl Shows Her Strength
By David Hughes

TERRE HAUTE — In the tiny Clark County community of Westfield, Ill., there’s a 14-year-old girl with big aspirations.

Her name is Kari Davis and she’s a freshman at Casey-Westfield High School. Back on Aug. 18, she won the 69-kilogram-plus weight class of the girls 13-15 age division in the Pan-American Sub-15 Weightlifting Championships at Colorado Springs, Colo.

The meet included athletes from Mexico, Canada and Barbados in addition to the United States. Davis lifted 176 pounds in the clean and jerk and 150 pounds in the snatch for a total of 326 pounds, all first in her division.

“I was kinda nervous at first, but I calmed down,” Davis said of the memorable experience.

Amazingly, the 5-foot-8 Davis started training with weights right after Labor Day of 2005, about one year ago.

“They got her started in weightlifting because she won the Illinois Class AA girls seventh-grade championship in the shot put two years ago,” explained her father Mark Davis, who works in Terre Haute.

“She’s a pretty strong girl. She’s got an excellent work ethic and we’ve got an excellent coach in Marty Schnorf.”

It’s been a lot of fun,” Kari told the Tribune-Star this week. “I had a lot of muscle in my upper body … and I grew so much muscle in my legs, it’s crazy.”

Schnorf runs the Charleston (Ill.) Weightlifting Club, which has a Web site that can be accessed at www.charlestonweightliftingclub.com.

Kari Davis, who will turn 15 in March, still competes in the shot put and plans to pitch for the Casey High School softball team in the spring.

But her long-range athletic goals are focused on weightlifting.

“If I keep working as hard as I have been,” she noted, “I want to make the [Summer] Olympics in eight or 10 years.”

Keep up the good work, Kari.