Little Lifter

Pass Cara Heads-Lane on the street and you might believe that within her 5-foot-3 frame lies the talent of an Olympic-caliber athlete. But it would be difficult to guess her sport.

She lifts weights, nearly twice as heavy as she is, above her head.

Heads-Lane, born in Newport Beach and reared in Costa Mesa, will represent the United States in the Pan American Games, which begin today in Winnipeg, Canada. She will compete in women’s weightlifting, which will make its Olympic debut in Sydney next year.

“The first thing people get confused about is when you say weightlifting they think bodybuilding,” said Heads-Lane, 21, a former homecoming queen at Newport Harbor High. “They look at me and they say, ‘Well, she’s not cut. . . .’ That’s why people won’t believe me.”

She was introduced to the sport in high school.

When Cara’s sister Gina, who is a year older, started at Newport Harbor, one of her coaches was Tony Ciarelli, who instructed the shot putters and discus throwers and was the school’s strength and conditioning coach. He got Gina involved in weightlifting to help her get stronger for track and basketball, but Ciarelli saw that Gina was naturally strong.

“I had already done a couple of [weightlifting] meets where I saw girls competing,” said Ciarelli, now football coach at Huntington Beach High. “So I got Gina involved in training, and then I got Cara involved the year after that.”

Near the end of the 1991-92 school year, when Cara was a freshman and Gina was a sophomore, Ciarelli took the sisters to Long Beach, where they competed in their first weightlifting meet.

“We were the only girls there,” said Cara, who finished second, behind her sister.

After a few more qualifying meets in California, Gina and Cara went to Blaine, Minn., for the U.S. Junior National Championships in May, 1993.

“We had no idea what to expect,” Gina said. “I would tell her, ‘They’re warming up, maybe we should too.’ ”

The sisters figured out what to do quickly enough; Gina finished first and Cara second in the 17-and-under division.

Weightlifting became their new passion. The girls kept lifting, though Gina’s career ended shortly after she arrived as a freshman at Stanford.

She tore a knee ligament in a pickup game of basketball and decided to give up competitive sports in order to concentrate on her studies. She graduated and is teaching first grade in Northern California.

All of a sudden, Cara, who attended Cal, found herself picking up where Gina had left off.

After 1 1/2 years at Cal, Heads-Lane moved to Savannah, Ga., in January, 1997, to train with Team Savannah before that summer’s Junior World Championships. Seven of the top 10 female lifters in the U.S. train with Team Savannah.

Heads-Lane won a bronze medal at the Junior Worlds in ‘97, her last eligible year, but more importantly she saw she might have a chance at accomplishing bigger things.

“All of a sudden I started doing the lifts that I would need to make the senior world team,” she said. “So I continued to stay down there and train.”

After failing to qualify for the 1997 Senior National Championships, Heads-Lane came out strong in 1998. She set American records for the 75-kilogram weight class (approximately 165 pounds) in the snatch (97.5 kilograms), the clean and jerk (120 kg) and total (217.5 kg), each of which still stands. USA Weightlifting named her the No. 2 senior female weightlifter for 1998.

This year, Heads-Lane’s national standing, compiled by USA Weightlifting, dropped to No. 6 after she attempted to compete in the 69-kg weight class and performed below expectations. She is back at 75 kg and hopes the Pan Am Games will reestablish her as one of the nation’s top female lifters.

After Winnipeg, Heads-Lane plans to head to Greece for the World Championships--the first Olympic qualifying meet--in Athens in November. Following that are the U.S. National Championships in March. The last qualifier is the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in New Orleans in June.

Michael Cohen, Team Savannah’s coach who will also coach the U.S. team in the 2000 Olympics, said Heads-Lane will probably be headed to Australia next year.

“I have five or six that could make the team without any problem,” Cohen said. “I think she’ll be in the top four.”

If she does make it to the Olympics, Heads-Lane said she might call it quits.

She wants to return to school, hoping to transfer to Stanford. She got married May 2 and is looking forward to having children. Her training regimen--as many as three hours a day, five days a week--isn’t something Heads-Lane necessarily wants to do for four more years.

“I just have to accomplish this one [Olympics], and then we’ll see about two,” she said with a laugh. “It’s a lot of hard work and sacrifice and discipline.

“When you really want to be on top, you have to cater your life to this goal. After one Olympics, I’m not sure if I’d want to do this again.”