Catching Up With: Cara Heads

Bryce Alderton

Where one Olympics ended, the road to a second is just beginning

for former Newport Harbor High track and field standout Cara Heads.

The 24-year-old Costa Mesa resident finished seventh in the

75-kilogram (165-pound) class in the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney,

Australia. She lifted 225 pounds in the snatch, matching a personal best,

while hoisting 275 pounds in the clean and jerk.

Her lift in the snatch tied the American record. Heads describes the

snatch as “a much faster movement” where the weightlifter quickly pulls

the bar from the floor above his or her head.

The clean and jerk is a three-movement exercise in which, gripping the

bar with hands closer together than the snatch, one pulls the bar from

the floor to the chest in a squatting position. After rising to a

standing position, the lifter than presses the bar overhead, where it

must be stabilized, before a successful lift is recognized.

Typically Heads has more difficulty with the clean and jerk because

one usually lifts more weight.

“It depends on what day you catch me on,” Heads said with a chuckle,

as to what is more difficult, the clean and jerk or the snatch. “(The

clean and jerk) has more weight, but the snatch is a faster movement.”

Sydney may have been her first Olympics, but not her last.

Heads currently trains with coaches Stephanie and Tony Ciarelli for a

shot at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece, where she hopes to apply

what she learned from Sydney.

“It was definitely a learning experience for me,” Heads said. “I

enjoyed the opening ceremonies. It was a celebration of what I had

achieved in just making the Olympic team.”

Heads met gold medalist Marion Jones, among other athletes, on the

field during the opening ceremonies, which she said gave her inspiration.

But the road to Athens includes the World Championships, Nov. 17-24 in

Warsaw, Poland.

To get ready for the World Championships, Heads said she spends two

hours a day five to six days a week lifting in addition to some form of

cross-training.

She has grown accustomed to training with the Ciarellis, whom she

trained with in high school, before graduating in 1995.

Tony Ciarelli is, once again, the Sailors’ defensive coordinator after

a five-year term as head football coach at his alma mater, Huntington

Beach.

Stephanie Ciarelli is one of the highly regarded female coaches in the

country, and one of the few with Olympic-style credentials, Heads said.

Returning to Costa Mesa to train with the Ciarellis in October, 2000

was “a no-brainer,” Heads said.

“I sought (Tony) out definitely,” Heads said. “Tony has got my work

cut out for me with sprints, speed work and agility. The weight and

repetitions are increasing each week.”

Heads began weightlifting in 1991 when she was a freshman at Newport

Harbor, when she met Tony Ciarelli, who also coached Heads’ 25-year-old

sister, former Newport Harbor track and field and basketball standout and

national age-group weightlifting champion, Gina Heads. “(Gina) was an

amazing athlete and an inspiration to me,” Cara Heads said. “She was one

of the shortest people on our teams, but rebounded like crazy. I learned

how to do everything from her.”

Tony Ciarelli recognized Cara Heads’ weightlifting ability and, before

she knew it, she was competing in weightlifting competitions in Venice

and Long Beach.

“It just took off from there,” Heads recalled.

Heads, who also played two seasons of basketball for Newport Harbor,

enjoyed success as a prep discus thrower.

As a senior, Heads posted the fifth-best discus throw in Orange County

history to that point, 149-feet, 5-inches in the CIF state preliminaries

to qualify second. She finished fifth in the finals with a best of 140-7,

the same distance she threw to win the Sea View League title by nearly 22

feet.

Heads competed in high school while enduring two knee surgeries (one

on each knee) in 1992 and 1994, with one surgery to repair a torn

meniscus.

“Now my knees are great,” Heads said. “Thank goodness I’ve had no

problems throughout training.”

During her days as a Sailor, Heads learned to balance her athletics

with academics and her social life.

“At 6 or 6:30 in the morning, I would have basketball practice and

weightlifting,” Heads recalled. “I was really committed to doing well and

being successful. I learned a lot from all the experiences with two or

three different sports, maintaining good grades and having a positive and

productive social life. I learned how to handle multiple things at one

time and do them well.”

In January, Heads will return to UC Berkeley for her junior year. She

began at Berkeley in the fall of 1995, but left in January 1997 for

Savannah, Ga., to train with female weightlifters.

She hasn’t declared a major yet, but said her interests are in

communications, television production and management.

Heads lives with her parents, Cathy and Larry Heads, in Costa Mesa and

looks forward to possibly taking some dance classes, catching up with

friends, reading and cooking when she has free time, something somewhat

new to Heads.

“With weightlifting, you don’t have the opportunity to do as many

things as you would like,” Heads said.