Bethann McCalla is a petite college coed with a lust for trying new things. Her latest venture is training for the 2012 Olympics. Standing 5-foot 2-inches and weighing just 130 pounds, you would expect her sport to be gymnastics. Uhuh.
Try weightlifting.
“Why? Because God put me
here, I guess,” she said. “Everything happens for a
reason. Weightlifting is kind of my sanctuary. It’s fun
when you have a good workout, and
fun when the
people around you support you. It doesn’t have to be
fun because you’re good.”
But she is good according to her coach, Jianping
Ma. Ma himself is a former world and Olympic
competitor and Chinese Junior National coach. Now
he coaches aspiring professional-level weightlifters at
the United Sport and Athlete, Inc. (USA) center in
Waterloo.
“Bethann is one of my favorite athletes,” Ma
said. “She has lot of potential because of her strength
and her coordination. I think in the future she can be
an Olympian.”
McCalla has tried just about everything. She
started signing up for activities as soon as her age
would allow. “I was the only child, so my parents
were gung ho about me getting into stuff,” she said.
She tried gymnastics,
soccer and
swimming. She
did dance. Growing
up in Clarinda,
IA, she competed
in track
her junior and
senior years in
high school, participating
in the
4x100 at the Drake
Relays. She started
in both basketball
and volleyball. She
played in Honor Band,
Jazz Band, marching band,
Honor Marching Band, and
was a drum major. She came to
the University of Northern Iowa on a
music scholarship.
“I lasted five days as a music major,” McCalla
said. “I got a little burnt out in high school.”
She now is majoring in gerontology and health
care administration. “I love old people.”
Choosing UNI over Northwest Missouri State
because “that was too close to home”, and changing
career paths, McCalla struggled for awhile. She competed
on the Panther track team briefly. Once again,
she took a leap into experiences unknown when she
tried the pole vault for the first time. “It was a lot of
fun,” she said. “I learned a lot, but it didn’t work out. I
ran a little club track and competed in the vault, actually
placing fifth in one meet.”
Weightlifting wasn’t even on the horizon, except
when and where it appeared in training for other
sports. Working out one day in the UNI weight room,
Panther strength and conditioning Coach Jed Smith
approached her and said “I bet you’re really strong,
aren’t you? You’re lean, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t know what he was talking about,” Mc
Calla said. “But he got right on the phone and told
someone ‘I’ve got this girl, you have to train her on
Olympic lifts’. It was a grad student at UNI. He actually
coached me for the first three or four months before
Jianping came. He gave me a good foundation.”
She’s been training seriously only since last March.
McCalla has participated in four meets. Competing
at 58 kilos (about 127.6 pounds), she won
her first meet. She showed up in a track suit borrowed
from a UNI athlete and tennis shoes. “People
were wondering who I was,” she laughed. “There
are weightlifting shoes.” She won her second meet,
qualifying for the collegiate nationals. She recorded
a personal best in her third meet. If she would have
successfully completed her “clean and jerk”, she would
have qualified for the American Open, one of the top
three meets in the nation. Two weeks later in a meet,
she placed second to a Canadian lifter.
She’s definitely a multi-tasker. She’s enrolled in
12 hours at UNI, works 10-15 hours at a local assisted
living center, trains five to six days weekly for at least
two hours, and has a steady boyfriend.
“This is serious training,” McCalla said. “I
found out over the years that I can’t manage my time
well unless I’m involved in at least three things. That
helps me stay balanced. If I’m in only one thing, I’m
worthless. I just sleep all day.”
In the beginning, she didn’t know what to think
about the sport. “It was nice to have a coach who paid
attention to me,” she said. “I had moral support and
feedback.
“There are good days and there are bad days
and some days can be really ugly. I have frustration
with my technique, Jianping may be jumping down
my throat. He is an absolute perfectionist, a great guy
and the best coach I’ve had in any sport, but some
days he will ride your horse. That’s what makes us
all improve every week. Weightlifting has been positive
and uplifting. It’s pushed me to fight through the
pain.
“You do it because it forces you to dig deeper,”
she said. “In a lot of sports you can scrape by and
blame something on anybody else. Weightlifting is
an individual sport, the proof is in the puddin’. It’s
a natural test of the human ability. There aren’t any
gimicks.”
McCalla says being female and staying mentally
tough can be obstacles. “Some days I don’t think I
can do this. You get mad if you have a bad meet. You
think, ‘I shouldn’t have stayed up late. I should have
watched my diet’. I watch my calories. I don’t drink
soda. I eliminated sodium as much as possible, excess
sugar and high fat. I try to get a lot of protein with my
workout in the form of whey because I don’t really eat
a lot of meat. I eat light through the week, just a little<
bit all day long, then on weekends I eat whatever I
want except before meets.
“Before the last meet I didn’t drink anything for
24 hours, didn’t eat anything for 48 hours, and hit the
sauna. Weight has been a really tough problem before
meets. It doesn’t matter if you train heavy, but before
a meet I can get fatigued and frustrated. After weighing
in, then you can eat. But I don’t lift well if I’ve
eaten a lot. My goal is to keep my weight down consistently
so it’s not a last-minute battle. Being female,
we have a little extra weight from time to time.”
How have the males in the sport treated her?
“I’m definitely in the boys’ club,” McCalla said. “They
kind of have taken me under their wing. They respect
me. They don’t hold back around me. When I was
pole vaulting I was around all guys. When I do have
issues, like my weight, they are very supportive.”
McCalla said 2012 seemed like a lifetime away
until she had a conversation with her father. “I’m
such a big advocator of not having regrets,” she said.
“I feel like in five years I’d regret not having tried (the
Olympics). At the same time, that’s so far away. I’m
almost through with college.
“My dad decided there are four things to
consider – if I stay injury-free, if I have Jianping, if
I’m physically able to lift, not just health-wise, but
strength-wise – if I’m not improving, can’t do this,
fine; and having the facilities to train at. The great
thing about weightlifting, if you do it correctly, it’s one
of the safest sports in the world. With Jianping, no
one does it incorrectly more than once.”
McCalla and several other trainees from USA
will get to see how the Chinese train firsthand when
they travel to China, spending several weeks at the
beginning of August. McCalla will go over a few days
early with Ma to investigate the possibility of her
training there for at least six months at a time after
she graduates. “I have to finish my degree,” she said.
“I don’t really enjoy school, but I know I have to do it.
I’m here for school, not weightlifting.”
In addition, she and several other athletes will
train and attend a Chinese team demonstration in Columbus, OH in March.
Her advice for other females interested in
pursuing weightlifting as a sport is to “just do it.
Whatever girls do, I think they should do it with style
and in their own style. Nothing should hold you
back." |
