>Ahmad records the top lift mark in Junior Division
Friday, August 28, 2009
Last updated: Friday August 28, 2009, 1:03 PM
BY BRIAN FARRELL
The Ridgewood News
SPORTS EDITOR
RIDGEWOOD — Yama Ahmad, who will be a junior at Ridgewood High School, was the top weight presser in the Junior Division at head football coach Chuck Johnson’s 25th annual Ridgewood Bench-A-Thon, which is conducted the second Wednesday in June.
Johnson, who is entering his 26th season as RHS’ head football coach, designs his weightlifting contest to promote, mainly for his football players, overall team strength and competition. The bench-a-thon is open to any student at Ridgewood High School, and each competitor has two attempts to press his maximum weight.
The Junior Division is for freshmen and sophomores, and the Senior Division is for juniors and seniors. Each division has four weight classes.
Ahmad hoisted 305 pounds in the 181-Pound-and-Unlimited Weight Class, an improvement of 75 pounds over his third-place bench press of 230 pounds in the same weight class at the event in 2008. In second place behind Ahmad him was Zach Vinci, who will be a junior, and he had the event’s second-highest bench press for the Junior Division with a lift of 280 pounds.
No records were broken at the bench-a-thon this year, but Sam Combs, who graduated in June, tied his mark for the event’s fourth-highest bench press, 365 pounds, which he accomplished his sophomore year of 2007 and which was duplicated in 2008 by Ken Phillips. Last year, Combs became number two on the all-time list, bench pressing 400 pounds. His freshman year, Combs bench pressed 295 pounds.
Doug Sokolik’s benchmark of 430 pounds, lifted his senior year of 2001, is still the Ridgewood Bench-A-Thon’s gold standard. Ted Allard’s 1989 bench press of 375 pounds in the Senior Division ranks third all-time.
“Weight training has become such an integral part of what we do to prepare for a football season,” Johnson said. “It used to be thought that we [Ridgewood] had a definite edge because of our weightlifting program, but our league [Northern New Jersey Interscholastic League] has become so competitive and physical, and now there are other outstanding weight-training programs in our league. The day has come where you cannot play high school football in New Jersey if you’re not going to lift weights.”
“We have been stressing strength development in the off-season and the importance of strength and its ability to, number one, improve performance, and, number two, reduce injury,” Johnson said. “There is, of course, the confidence-building issue with weight training, but there is also the injury-prevention factor. Our injury rate has gone down steadily in the football program with increased participation in the off-season in the weight-training program.”
Johnson’s bench-a-thon has always been open to any Ridgewood High School athlete or non-athlete, but, in 2002, he enlisted the support of the school’s wrestling program in planning and conducting the event.
“A lot of the football players are also wrestlers, and they are very active in the weight room and have done a lot of weight training,” said Johnson, a 1970 Ridgewood High School graduate who has been the Maroons’ head football coach since the 1984 season.
Torre Watson, one of Johnson’s assistant football coaches and Ridgewood High School’s head wrestling coach, assisted Johnson at the bench-a-thon.
“This joint venture between the football and wrestling programs is a great idea from the fund-raising perspective, obviously, but moreover for the marriage of the two programs,” Watson said. “I think the better we are as wrestlers is going to obviously facilitate us being better as football players and vice versa. There are so many parallels between the two sports. If we can be on the same proverbial page with each other, then both of our programs can flourish, so I think it’s an absolutely great situation.”
“It’s good to see both the football and wrestling programs in a joint venture,” said Watson. “I think that’s something, unfortunately, that is not harbored in other school districts. It’s astonishing to me because there is so much carry-over between the two sports. There are so many things from leverage to footwork to quickness to agility to discipline that are present on the wrestling mat that are also employed on the football field, so it’s kind of perplexing to me why there’s not a connection between the two sports [at some schools]. But we’re doing the best we can to try to make sure that the two programs work closely together so both of them can move in a positive direction.”
The Ridgewood Bench-A-Thon serves as a major fundraiser for the football and wrestling programs. Each competitor in the bench-a-thon is asked to get as many sponsors as he feels comfortable with among parents, relatives, friends, neighbors, parental business associates, local businesses and companies for the purpose of fund-raising for the football program and, since 2002, the wrestling program at the high school as well.
For example, if someone sponsors a participant for ten cents per pound, and the individual bench presses 200 pounds as a maximum lift, that sponsor would donate $20. The money received is used for various athletic-related purposes over and above budgeted funds. Over the years, the money has been used to purchase weight-training equipment, football game jerseys, practice shorts, T-shirts, hats and a stereo system for the weight room at the high school.
At the bench-a-thon this year rooting the athletes on was Bill Grundy, an assistant football coach on Johnson’s staff, who is recovering from a stroke caused when a brain aneurysm burst in April of 2008 while at his job as a physical education teacher at Demarest Middle School.
E-mail: farrellb@northjersey.com