By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Pound for pound, Jeremy Benezra may be the strongest teenager in Washington State. The graduating senior from Newport, east of Bellevue, laid claim to the title by taking first place in the Washington state high school powerlifting championships for his weight class. The contest was held on June 1 in the town of White Salmon in the Columbia Gorge, home to one of the state’s stronger high school teams.
Powerlifting, as a sport, combines three different weightlifting events — bench press, “dead” lift and squat. Lifters, who are matched according to their size, are given three chances in each, and their best performances are added together for a final score. Jeremy, who turned 19 a few days before the meet and competes in the 165-pound class, finished with a combined weight of 1,250 pounds, beating out 13 other competitors to walk away with the trophy.
In addition to participating in sports, the Eastside native has been active in BBYO, the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization. Last year, he served as president of the Rainier chapter.
Benezra is a second-generation native of the Puget Sound area. His mother’s parents came here after the Holocaust. The family belongs to Temple De Hirsch Sinai.
Jeremy, who is also a wrestler, has been lifting weights since he was 15 years old, but he only began competing in the sport last year.
“I knew I was stronger than the average person because I had lifted for a good time before I started powerlifting,” Benezra said. “One of my buddies who had been powerlifting the year before said, ‘Hey, you should try it.’ I tried it and I got third place in my first tournament.”
Jeremy said he went down to the small town the night before with his family and his coach, Kevin Eiene, a teacher at Newport High, to be ready for the Saturday morning event. Although there were more than a dozen of the state’s best high school weightlifters in his class at the event, Jeremy said the real competition was between himself and two other boys. Before he went down to southern Washington, he predicted to his friends that he would take the top prize in the championships, but he faced some stiff competition once he got there.
“It was actually very close,” he said. “I was behind after the first two lifts and I ended up coming from behind and winning.” His first event was the squat lift, in which he finished by hoisting 470 pounds. “I got my first attempt, I missed my second and I retried it on my third and got it.” In the next event, he bench-pressed 260 pounds for a combined subtotal of 730.
“After the squat there was a guy ahead of me in first place, ” Jeremy recalled. “I was in second, and there was a guy below me in third place who was pretty close. After the bench press it was the same way,” he said. “I was in second place. I knew that I had the best dead lift of anyone else. I knew the guy in first had not the strongest dead lift, but the guy in third place had a decent dead lift.”
When the dead lift — the last event of the meet — finally came, the boy Jeremy considered his main competition went before him and pulled 455 pounds. On his first effort, Benezra chose to try lifting 470 pounds, enough to provisionally place him in the top slot. For their second attempts Jeremy succeeded in hoisting 510 pounds and his competitor managed 490.
“He knew that if he pulled 510 that he would beat me, and then I would have to pull 515 to beat him.” Jeremy said he conferred with the other student’s coach, who confirmed that he could win the meet if he managed to lift 515 pounds on his final attempt, which he did.
At that point, convinced that he had won the face-off, Benezra went outside to begin celebrating with his family. Back inside, however, the competing coach lodged a protest with the referee, saying that Jeremy needed to add at least 10 pounds to his previous attempt for it to count.
“I don’t know if he was wrong or he did it on purpose,” said Jeremy, declining to identify the other coach or the school he came from. “That rule,” he added, “is only between your first and second attempts, not between your second and third. I didn’t know that at the time so I thought my dead lift didn’t count.” He was called back in and told that because of the protest his final dead lift would not be counted, but he was given one more chance.
“The head judge awarded me a fourth attempt of 520 pounds to win the state championships. I did that and I actually got it, so I won.” Other than assuming that the rival coach was motivated by a desire for his lifter to walk off with the trophy, Jeremy said he did not know whether the coach was intentionally misreading the rules or was simply mistaken. Whatever was the case, Benezra said he felt he was mistreated by the man, who had encouraged him to call for a 515-pound lift, then used that fact to try to upend the results.
Ultimately, Jeremy Benezra succeeded and was justifiably proud of his accomplishment, which he attributed to a lot of hard work leading up to it.
“I wasn’t that surprised, ” he said. “I’ve been training like this a lot harder and more intense than most people had, so I was pretty confident.”
As for the future, Jeremy plans to continue to compete in powerlifting events. In the fall he said he will be going to the University of Washington, despite the fact that the college does not field a powerlifting team. Beyond that, he has not made any definite plans.
“I don’t know yet what I’ll be studying,” he allowed.