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SOUTH JORDAN — A Bingham High School junior was recently selected for Team USA’s Youth Pan American women’s weightlifting squad and will compete in Palmira, Colombia, in June.
Chloe Wise, 16, who trains with coach Braden Jenkins at Big Mountain Barbell in Midvale, is relatively new to the sport, according to Stacy Wise, Chloe's mother. She started weightlifting when she was 14 and has been doing it for 2 1/2 years, Stacy Wise said.
Chloe is one of 20 youth chosen for the Youth Pan Am team, according to a Feb. 23 statement released by Team USA, and one of 10 selected for the women’s team. Other members of the women's team are from Missouri, California, Arizona, Illinois, Texas, Maryland and Georgia, the statement said.
Competitive weightlifting was practiced by ancient Greek and Egyptian societies and was featured at the 1896 Athens Games, according to the International Olympic Committee. Today, competitors compete in two categories: the snatch, and the clean and jerk, both of which involve lifting a maximum-weight barbell loaded with additional weights.
Chloe said she got into weightlifting through CrossFit, which she was introduced to in 2014 by a neighbor.
“I found Olympic weightlifting, and I was like, ‘Hey, maybe I should just try this out,’” she said. “And I didn’t even know what it was at that point.”
At her first weightlifting meet, Wise qualified for a 2016 National Youth Championships event, which is for competitors 21 and younger. She trained for two months and “ended up going and I took fourth in the nation” at the competition in Austin, Chloe said.
During the summer of 2017, Chloe decided to drop CrossFit and put her full focus into weightlifting. In February, she competed at the National Junior Championships in Spokane and placed fifth, one of only two competitors under 18 to make it in the top 5, she said.
“I competed with a lot of older girls,” Chloe said.
Soon after, she said she was sitting in class when she received news that brought her to tears.
“I got a call from Team USA a few weeks ago and they told me that I made the team, and (that) I have everything paid for and I get to go and compete in June.”
For the 16-year-old, the announcement was a dream come true.
“Being on an international team and making Team USA has been my goal for quite a long time,” Chloe said. “Ever since I started, I’ve always dreamt of being on an international team. So for this year, my biggest goal was to make Team USA, and I already made it and it’s only February.”
Stacy Wise said her daughter “has some serious talent.”
“We are all so proud of her,” Stacy Wise said. “She cleans her gym to pay for her training. It’s a great story of hard work and determination.”
The best thing about weightlifting “is just bettering myself,” Chloe said. “Weightlifting is a lot of hard work, (especially) going to school full time and being a high school student and trying to train full time too. It’s a lot of work, it’s very long days.”
Chloe said she typically trains every day after school for about 3 1/2 hours.
“It’s really hard but the reward is very exciting,” she said. “That’s what I love about it, just training hard and knowing that if I work really hard that I’ll make it big someday.”
“The harder you work, the better reward you will have, and that just works with anything in life.”
According to Team USA’s Feb. 23 statement, the 2018 Youth Pan American Championships will take place June 3-10. The final athletes who lift for Team USA will be determined before the competition, the statement said.
