Chavez, Aguilar take 1st and 2nd Place at State
By John Earp
This past weekend, Jal High School Senior, Elijah Chavez, and Junior, Ebany Aguilar, competed in the NMAA State Powerlifting Meet. Chavez took first place in his weight class, while Aguilar took second place in hers. This is Chavez’s third year competing in powerlifting for Jal High. Both athletes were described by their coach, Dusty Loftis, as focused on powerlifting almost exclusively. Chavez says he has been lifting year-round for almost three years. He says he has really enjoyed powerlifting.
Chavez competed against 15 lifters in the A-AAA class at the state meet. He squatted 405 pounds, bench pressed 260 pounds, and deadlifted 500 pounds to win the championship. The competition was very tough, with only a 15-pound difference in the combined weight of the three lifts between first and third place in the meet.
When he first began powerlifting his sophomore year, he recalls he benched 215 and deadlifted 365 pounds, so he has made significant progress over the past three years. He plans on continuing to compete in powerlifting after high school. He also played football and ran track and cross country during his high school career, but powerlifting has been his number one sport.
“My first year in powerlifting, I just competed off of a whim, and I had just started working out. For my last two years, my training has purely just been off of my own knowledge and research, but what I can say is that this year, my last year, has been completely different types of training from the first two. He does a little bit more than just the heavy lifts, including accessory lifts in his training. For me and how my body works, I normally would do five days a week and take Saturday and Sunday off. I would squat on Monday, I would bench on Tuesday and depending on the week I either deadlift on Wednesday either heavy or just do some accessories for deadlift movement, and then that Thursday I would do bench again and then Friday, squat.”
Aguilar said being runner up in the state made her realize she needs to work harder to win first next year. She said, “I’m just happy I did better than last year. Ebany has been competing in powerlifting for four years. It is the only sport she has really wanted to be a part of. She squatted 280 pounds, benched 110 pounds, and deadlifted 285 pounds. Last year, she says she squatted 250 pounds, benched 95 pounds, and deadlifted 275 pounds. She only takes time off of training for powerlifting during summer break. Aguilar says she was only 20 pounds less than the first-place winner in her total lifts at last week’s meet.
JHS Head Powerlifting Coach Dusty Loftis said, “We went up there just with two kids and came home with two medals, a state champion and a state runner-up. Not a bad day at the office. When it comes to individual sports like this, a lot of it depends on just how hard the kids work. I’ve had several state champions in track before. More times than not is those kids that endlessly put in work, hours upon hours. That’s what these two kids did. They just put in the work and kept putting in the work. They’ve been at the state competition for years and years and so they’ve seen how it works. They’ve gained experience that way. They’re some pointers here and there I could give them, but a lot of it just comes down to, ‘Have they put in the work when nobody’s looking,’ and the answer to that is they have. Both of these kids, powerlifting is their sport. They don’t really do much outside of powerlifting. I know Elijah played football, but really their main focus is powerlifting, and so they really try to put all their focus into that, and it pays off, obviously. They’ve both gone up there and received points and medals for their team. Their hard work has not gone unnoticed. Those kids that train year-round, those are the ones that usually come out on top.”
Loftis said, “It was quite a day when Elijah was lifting. He almost bombed out of the competition on squat. He missed his first two lifts on squat and he just gutted out a third lift to keep advancing and then as we just kept going around lift to lift.
We went in thinking that we were fighting for second place because going in the regular season standings had a kid from Estancia out in front of everybody by like 100 pounds. We really thought going in, if this kid was going to lift like he had been lifting, that he had a really good shot at winning, and everybody else was just going for second. Well, that kid, he didn’t have a great squat and then he had a very good bench. I knew it was coming down to deadlift and whoever just had the best deadlift, they were going to come out on top. Sure enough, that’s what happened. It got down to the last lift and everybody was going for 500+ pounds, and what set Elijah apart from the others is he had 480 pounds already lifted. We knew if Elijah, if he just hit that 500 pounds on that last deadlift, he was going to win. Sure enough, it came down to that last lift and he just lifted it like a boss. It was exciting watching him get that and all that hard work that he’s put in. What a way to go out, to go out on top.”
Loftis says he hopes the great showing at this year’s state meet will encourage more students to go out for powerlifting next year. “With the success that we’ve had over the years, plus with these kids in PE lifting every day, we are hoping that we will have some long-term success. Ultimately, that will translate to better teams across all of our athletics. The beauty about powerlifting, and why I wish all of our kids would do it is, when you’re competing, it’s just you up there. There’s nobody else competing at the same time. So what it does, it’s a very high stress, high pressure situation. So as a kid, if you can learn to manage that and you go into other sports in high stress, high pressure situations, you’ve already been there and hopefully conquered that, and are that more mentally tough, that just translates to better success on and off field.” Loftis says, “I had the easy job. They had to go lift the weights. They made us proud, made the school proud and the whole community proud.”