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GIRL POWER: Rams lifters win state championship
The Class 5A championship girls team, and its coaches.
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RIO RANCHO — Less than two months after the Cleveland High School girls wrestling team topped all other teams on the mats to win the state team title in the Rio Rancho Events Center, the Rio Rancho High School girls powerlifting team did likewise Friday, winning the 2024 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and National Electrical Contractors Association State Powerlifting Championships.
On Saturday, the Cleveland High boys team also won a blue trophy; adding in the Rams’ boys’ third-place finish and the Storm girls’ runner-up slot, city teams brought home four trophies from the meet, with powerlifting officially a sport, after a couple seasons as an activity for the New Mexico Activities Association.
Ladies first
Anchored by three individual champs, the Rio Rancho girls edged Cleveland by just seven points in the team totals, 39-32; Clovis (28) placed third.
Winning titles for the Rams were 181-Arianna Valenzuela, a fourth-place finisher in 2023 who last week broke the state record in the deadlift (370 pounds), squat (330 pounds) and overall weight hefted (845 pounds, which topped the second-place finisher by 170 pounds); 220-Cecelia Gomez; and 259-plus Alayah Gonzales.
At 132, Kaira Romero was second for the Rams; and at 198, Yarynn Cruz and 259-plus Jada Smith were third. The Rams also had three girls placing fourth — 114-Ana Tafoya, 123-Veronica Atencio and 165-Reece Cave; 220-Mikayla Ellis nabbed a fifth-place finish.
“It was a tough fight,” acknowledged coach Rocky Ramirez, assisted by Ally Salata and Silas Thornton. “We had a few mishaps in the early lifts (squat and bench), but the girls recovered when they needed to. We’ve always been a deadlift team, so we had fixed a lot of our early problems when that event came up.
“Our most surprising lifter we had was our freshman, Alayah Gonzales, who lifted in the super-heavyweight division and took first.”
Cleveland had a pair of individual state champs: 123-Jaylee Gandert and 132-Haylee White; 97-Kira Dobbs and 165-Serenity Garcia were runners-up.
Rounding out the eight girls who took the podium later Friday was third-place finisher 123-Affinity Archuleta; 132-Regina Trevizo and 220-Millicent Lyman were fourth; and 198-Leah Lopez was fifth.
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Linfoot leads Storm boys
The 220-pound Cleveland High senior Ben Linfoot, the center on the state runner-up Storm football team and a powerlifting runner-up in 2022 and a state champ in ’23, was one of three CHS lifters to win a title. At 132, Emmanuel Shepard and 308 Samuel Madrid were the Storm’s other individual state champs, leading to a team score of 47 points.
Cleveland also had a trio of runners-up and three third-place finishers in its decisive win over second-place Sandia (28) and the third-place Rams (24).
At 148, Brandon Pingao, 220-Kaiden Gibbs and 275-Gabriel Marquez were Cleveland’s runners-up; 114-Brandon Jimenez, Marl Xyrone Cornelio and Zachary Mose finished third for the Storm.
Fourth-place CHS lifter 181-Gabriel Brawley gave Cleveland 10 boys to stand on the podium after the meet.
"This state title is special," CHS coach Steven Steele, a former Storm and Lobo football player, said. "Not only because it is the first one as an NMAA-sanctioned sport, but because of this group of seniors. For some, it was their third year of competing and others their second.
"Nine of the 12 that qualified and competed were seniors; five of those seniors had been through the heartache at state with hearing our name being called for the red trophy. They had a goal set in the pre-season that this year would be different.
"I couldn't be more proud of them for how hard they trained and the dedication they put toward the weight room," Steele added. "At the end of the day, I am just there with the clipboard and guiding them through their next attempts. They're lifting all the weights. They deserve all the credit."
The Rams had nine mount the podium, but just one champ and a sole runner-up: 275-Jose Onteveros, a runner-up in 2023, was state champ; 181-Alejandro Baca finished second.
The Rams had a pair of third-place lifters — 220-Ryan Brown and super-heavyweight JJ Sanchez. 148-Jayden Maxfield-Martinez placed fourth, while 165-Rayce Ramirez, 198-Mario Rios-Delara, 242-Riley Donart and super-heavyweight Justice Salinas were fifth.
