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Pennala prepared for Junior Nationals this weekend

Daver Karnosky/Daily Mining Gazette Irene Pennala lifts a practice weight over her head during a training session Wednesday. Pennala will compete at the Junior Nationals Saturday in Lombard, Illinois.

HANCOCK — At first glance, Irene Pennala looks just like any other teenage girl. She holds her phone in her hands, texting someone. She puts her phone down and puts on a playlist that includes Taylor Swift songs. She smiles with a mouth full of braces as she talks about work. She is preparing to work out.

That’s where the similarities end.

Other teenages work out in order to strengthen themselves for basketball, volleyball, hockey, or another sport along those lines. Pennala does not.

She is preparing to lift more weight than kids her age normally do. She walks around behind a bar with enough weight on it to make a casual observer scratch their head. She squats down and bounces once or twice and then springs up, rolling the bar quickly up to the top of her chest. She waits, breathes. Then, she does the seemingly impossible. She takes one quick step back for balance with one leg, and thrusts the bar with numerous weights on it above her head.

In the world of competitive weightlifting, this maneuver is known as a clean and jerk.

Pennala is working on her form. She loves Olympic Weightlifting and feels that it is where she belongs.

“It’s different,” she said. “Most people are surprised. I am used it. It will make me stronger in the long run.

“It’s awesome. I love everything about it. The people that do it are awesome. They tell you their stories of how they got into it.”

With the Junior Nationals coming up on Saturday outside of Chicago in Lombard, Illinois, Pennala got some last-minute work in before heading out on the road to make the drive Wednesday.

Nadine Sikora, who works as her coach, was in the gym with her on Wednesday and spent an hour discussing a game plan for the event while also making sure her student’s form was where it was supposed to be.

Pennala heads to Lombard with a simple goal in mind, place. In qualifying for the Junior Nationals, she set six state records, including in the clean and jerk at both the youth and junior levels, squats in the youth and junior levels, and combined score at the youth and junior levels.

Her coach beams discussing Pennala’s accomplishments.

“She had to drop weight to get into the category that she needed to get into,” Sikora said. “The weights that she lifted, all of that combined was like the perfect recipe to get herself those state records.”

Pennala got into Olympic Weightlifting by accident. She had gotten into crossfit like many athletes, to improve her strength for high school sports. One day, by happenstance, she missed the crossfit class she was in, but she heard there was a weightlifting class. The rest, as they say, is history.

“I started crossfit to get better at other sports,” she said. “At that point, I was going every day. I missed a class. Weightlifting happened to be at a later time, so I tried it out. Nadine convinced me to stay and I liked it.”

Now, nearly her whole family is in the act. On Wednesday, she was joined in the gym by her sister, Sam, a rising youth star who qualified for Youth Nationals herself.

Sikora has seen the growth in the elder Pennala sister over the past year as she has dedicated herself to improving her weightlifting technique.

“When she first started, she was pretty dedicated,” Sikora said. “She’s in here every single day she needs to be, sometimes five-six times a week… It just shows the passion and dedication she has for the sport.”

Those interested in following Pennala Saturday can do so through the teamusa.org website.

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