Ocoee High School senior Samantha Jefferson came home from Panama City and the FHSAA State Weightlifting Tournament with much more than gold.
Samantha and her father Greg have always been a tight team.
“He’s always been my coach, even before I did weightlifting because he was my father too,” Samantha Jefferson said. “It’s not like he wasn’t just my sports coach he was my life coach.”
And he was right next to her back at the state weightlifting finals this past weekend to see his daughter compete and win back-to-back titles.
“I saw it more as, like competing with myself because I set my own goals and records and stuff like that I wanted to beat,” Samantha said of her journey to repeat.
And together they drew up the blueprints that would put her back in a position to do just that.
“We’d eat, sleep and train and that’s one of the things that you know comes easy when a student or child sees having success,” Greg Jefferson said. “It’s something then they’ll continue to do. That’s one the of the things that kind of came easy I didn’t have to do much.”
Over the weekend Samantha lifted a total of 475 pounds, between benching and her clean and jerk lifts, to beat out the competition by a 110-pound margin.
This one extra special as she lifted 250 pounds on her bench setting a new state record in her 183-pound weight class. Her name is going down in the record books.
“When you get older and look back at the legacy that you left it really means a lot and that’s one of the things I try to instill in her that if she works hard it will be something that she will always say she was a state champion,” Greg added.
For Samantha it hasn’t all set in quite yet.
“I think it just felt like the period at the end of the sentence for this chapter of my high school weightlifting career and more or less leaving it with an exclamation point. Getting that state record is a new one,” Samantha said.
Samantha won’t be lifting in college next year but does continue to train with her dad and turn her attention to competing in cross fit.