Growing NU club Olympic weightlifting team makes headway with University Nationals around the corner

Northeastern’s two-year-old Olympic Weightlifting Team is preparing for the upcoming National University Championships in March, and with the club’s growth in numbers and talent, members plan to bring competition to the meet.nt or add new blocks...

Olympic weightlifting is rapidly gaining traction in the United States. Membership in USA Weightlifting has doubled from 11,000 to over 26,000 between the 2012 and 2016 Olympic games and consisted of over 30,000 people in 2020 according to its records.

The sport was established as a regular event at the Olympic Games in 1920, but 100 years later it still remains obscure to many. Since the name “weightlifting” itself is broad, its snatch and clean and jerk motions are often conflated with those of its confused-counterpart, powerlifting, which entails the squat, deadlift and benchpress. Given the recent rise of CrossFit on social media, weightlifting has become more present in collegiate and high school weight rooms. 

“Weightlifting was a very small scene,” said Sam Allegretti, a former club member and the current assistant coach. “Everyone knew everyone at every single competition because it'd be the same 20 people at every competition. But it’s becoming more mainstream.”

In the fall of 2021, Matt Tung, the current president of the team and a fourth-year health science major, and Allegretti officially formed the weightlifting club after waiting through the COVID-19 shutdown to begin the process. The two lifted throughout high school and wanted to form a team specifically catered to weightlifting given their passion for the sport.

Tung and Allegretti had doubts about the prospective team becoming a reality with there already being an established powerlifting team on campus. They hoped distinguishable interest between the two sports would be substantial enough to get the club off the ground. Creating the team would also require considerable paperwork and networking.

“We had to jump through a bunch of hoops and hurdles,” Tung said. “One of them was finding a coach, and finding an Olympic weightlifting coach is very hard just because Olympic weightlifting in itself is not a very popular sport.”

Tung and Allegretti found help in the powerlifting team members and named the head coach of the women’s powerlifting team, Kate Driscoll, their official head coach, as well. They also connected with Cheryl Haworth, three-time weightlifting Olympian, who is a virtual coach and plans their practices from Atlanta

Allegretti graduated last year but decided he was not ready to leave the growing team behind and became a volunteer coach this fall

“I feel like there's still a bunch I can add to the club,” said Allegretti. “Seeing people fall in love with the sport and put more effort in because they like it so much has been super cool to watch.”

This year the team hired Lauren Eustis to serve alongside Allegretti as an assistant coach. The team initially had about 20 members, most of whom had never done an olympic weight lift in their life. The team’s size has doubled this year, both in rookies and experienced lifters, with an improved balance between male and female lifters

“There are nine racks in Cabot,” said Holly Lewis, the women’s weightlifting captain and a third-year engineering major. “There were two racks for women in September 2021, so that was about seven women on the team. Now, four racks are occupied by women, which is really exciting.

The team’s triweekly practices at the Cabot Center are geared to prepare members for the University Nationals. Only Tung and Allegretti competed at the meet last year, but as the club has seen expansion and progress, members plan to participate as a registered team of 10 in March.

“We're a team at the university and we want to compete against other university teams as a club sport affiliated with the university,” Allegretti said. “We want to be competitive on the national level.”

With participation in the New England WSO Championship and Barbells for Boobs meets, members acquired five qualifications for nationals. The team looks forward to upcoming meets and more potential qualifications, Driscoll said.

“I'm excited to travel with an actual team of people and hopefully see us come home with medals,” she said.

Allegretti said the team developed an “organic bond,” making the hard work everyone puts in at practice that much more rewarding. First-year biochemistry major Emma Oscilowski joined the team in September and has found a supportive community in the club as she eagerly returns to practices each week.