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As if prospective Olympic weightlifter Holley Mangold (Alter) needed more to keep her busy at Ursuline College near Cleveland, she has joined the swim team.
“They were starting a new team this year and they needed people who could swim,” the 5-foot-8, 350-pound sophomore said. “I’ve had a couple of meets. I didn’t win, but I didn’t come in last. I’m a little too big to be swimming.”
Her size best serves Holley in weightlifting, of course, and last weekend in Mobile, Ala., she established herself as one of the nation’s top three women’s heavyweights by winning the American Open by 40 kilos over second-place finisher Tamara Solari. She bettered her personal record by 30 kilos.
“The murmur in the crowd was pervasive,” noted Vern Mangold, who accompanied his daughter. “Where did she come from? And she doesn’t train year round?”
Holley, 19, is too busy with track (she’s a shot putter) and school (double major in thelogy and sociology) to train year round. In fact, this was just her eighth meet since she decided to make weightlifting something more than a hobby.
“Most of these women started when they were 15,” said Holley, who attracted national media attention as a football lineman at Alter. “I didn’t start heavily into competitive lifting until I was 18. But I’ve progressed a lot and it’s looking good. I was a little bit of a doubter until I went to this meet.”
Aiming for the 2012 Games in London, Holley is free to prepare at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., when she chooses, but she prefers to stay close to her coach, Dan Bell. As it is, she lifts and trains five days a week at a mixed martial arts gym owned by famed boxing promoter Don King.
It beats training in Bell’s garage, which she had been doing, or on a campus ill-suited for slamming barbells around. Ursuline is a women’s college with a small second-floor workout area. Windows kept breaking whenever Holley would finish a lift and bounce it on the floor.
Swimming serves mainly as a diversion. Before this, the sister of New York Jets center Nick Mangold had played in a “powder puff” touch football league on campus. She developed a reputation for roughness, however, and was asked not to come back.
“I told them beforehand that if they run at me, I’ll hit them,” Holley said. “Well, this one girl rushed me and I just hit her with my hand and she fell to the ground and was all sad. I didn’t have much sympathy. They said I couldn’t play anymore.”
Old article... searched and didn't see anything. Hope it isn't a repeat.
She's huge... maybe she'll beat some of those really tiny but incredibly strong Asian women...