Marin teen athlete conquers heavy lifts with light heart

Noelia Torres-Perez stands before the barbell and its heavy round weights. Her back is straight, arms by her side, head bowed. Slowly, she bends forward and wraps her chalk-dusted hands on the silver metal bar.

In a flash, the tiny 17-year-old inhales, tightens her grip, crouches down and rises, lifting 50 pounds of metal and plastic until it rests on her shoulders. Her face relaxes and she does three leg squats. Then she quickly steps forward and hoists the weight over her head, both arms outstretched.

“That’s called the clean and jerk,” said Jasha Faye, a longtime weightlifter and coach who opened Marin Heavy Athletics in Novato, where Torres-Perez, who has Down syndrome, is one of many teens training for an upcoming national weightlifting competition.

“Are you ready?” Faye calls out. Her mother, sister and brother sit on a nearby bench and quietly watch.

“Yeah,” she replies.

“All right, let’s get it on!” Faye energetically calls out. “You got this!”

The gym quiets. Other teens pause to cheer her on — the gym’s rhythm and etiquette. Torres-Perez does it again, lifting the weight, holding it high, standing strong, and releasing it where it lands with a bounce and loud thud.

Then it is another young athlete’s turn to practice at the Olympic-style gym, where the students and coaches seem more like an extended family than individuals rushing in and out for a daily workout.

“Her sister and brother both lift here,” said Challen Schleh of Tiburon, one of the gym’s USA Weightlifting-certified coaches. “She’s really flourishing here. She trains among all the other young athletes and follows the same program as them.”

“She’s helped us,” says Faye, who discovered weightlifting as teen and became a national champion. “She comes in, gives everyone a hug, is friendly and talkative. … We’ve got all these kids in here and they are as thick as thieves.”

Torres-Perez is barely 5 feet tall. She came from school dressed in black sweatpants, a gray T-shirt, pink gym shoes and matching hair clip. In the past three years, she has gone from watching her older sister train to following in her footsteps.

“I asked my coach and he said it was OK. That’s how we started,” her sister Karen Torres-Perez said. “We’d do a little routine, warm up, exercise. We started with very basic pattern movements. Then we slowly started adding the barbell.”

After warmups, the training now consists of rounds of lifting progressively heavier weights. After each round, Noelia Torres-Perez writes what she’s done in a notebook. Afterward, she works on strengthening with her siblings.

During a break, Torres-Perez is asked how she’s doing today.

“I feel strong. I’ll be confident,” she said. “I’m coached by Jasha and Karen.”

What’s it like when you start lifting, she is asked. Does it hurt?

“I be confident,” she said. “It gets a little achy, though.”

What do you do then?

“They cheer me on. Also, my mom, my dad.”

She named some teammates and said she loves them.

On May 18, Torres-Perez and other local youths will be in Sacramento to qualify for a national competition run by USA Weightlifting, the sport’s governing body. She will compete in the adaptive division in her age category, which was created so people with disabilities can participate in the sport.

“She needs to comply with half of the total that her neurotypical peers will do,” her sister said, which would be lifting 28.5 kilos or about 63 pounds. “She competed about two months ago and she’s shy of that total by about 4 kilos.”

By early May, Torres-Perez was setting personal records and getting closer to qualifying for her first national competition. But no matter what happens, the weight training has been beneficial in many ways, her sister said.

“It’s been really good for her socially and emotionally, but also it has been a really good part of her therapies,” she said. “Her physical therapy has gotten to the point where they’ve decided that all she has to do is check in every few months.”

And then, like any sport, the time to talk was done and it was back to the training and strengthening exercises.

“It’s a prestigious national meet,” said Schleh. “Youth and junior athletes in USA Weightlifting from around the country will be traveling there to compete.”