That’s how she did it two weekends ago in Kenton while surrounded by a crowd that was cheering her and yelling: “Pull!...Pull!...Pull!”
And pull she did.
The 5-foot-1, 113-pound junior from Tippecanoe High School settled over a bar loaded with weight, went through her routine, grabbed hold and, as she looked heavenward and began her deadlift attempt, her teeth clenched, her eyes pinched shut, her upper body began to shudder from the strain and her face turned crimson.
And with that she deadlifted 305 pounds – nearly three times her body weight – to set a new state record at the Ohio Powerlifting Championships.
In the process, she once again lived up to her nickname:
Turbo Tilley.
She was recalling that championship effort a couple of evenings ago as she sat in the Tippecanoe High cafeteria with cheer coach, Jena Galloway, before the first of two nights of cheerleading tryouts for next school year.
Not only is Tilley a powerlifter, who trains under the guidance of Zach Vargo at The Athletic Proving Grounds in Tipp City, and a key component of Tippecanoe’s cheerleading team – which won the school’s first-ever Miami Valley League title last fall – but she’s a sprinter on the Red Devils track team, was a shortstop on the softball team, sings in the school choir, plays the piano and is carrying a 3.8 grade point average.
“She’s like the Energizer Bunny…only a real strong one,” Galloway laughed.
“When people see her lifting, they’re ‘What? You’re a cheerleader, too?’ And when they see her cheering – with the bow in her hair and looking like a girlie girl – they’re like, “What? You’re a powerlifter?’
“She’s great in both habitats. She transforms to wherever she is.”
And when it comes to Tilley – who turned 17 today – there’s one thing no one should have trouble understanding.
Forget all those antiquated, sexist, myopic points of view. She’s proof a cheerleader can be quite an athlete.
“Of course she’s an athlete,” said her mom, Rachel Cartwright, who once was a multi-sport athlete herself at Tippecanoe. “She’s an incredible athlete.
“She’s a cheerleader and can run faster than a lot of kids on the football team. She can do backflips and they can’t. She can lift more weight than a lot of them, too.
“She’s a little powerhouse.”
‘That’s a lot of weight’
“We used to watch football and basketball games on TV and they’d always show cheerleaders for a minute,” Rachel said. “And Ayeva would say,’I want to be a cheerleader.’”
She started to cheer when she was 5 and although she tried various sports and was good at some, she especially embraced cheerleading.
Later, along with sideline cheering, she began competitive cheer and eventually was jumping, tumbling and flying into the air.
“But when she was in eighth grade, we noticed she really wasn’t progressing in her tumbling anymore,” Rachel said. “It turned out she wasn’t getting enough conditioning for her body to be to do the elite tumbling and stunts.
“She wasn’t progressing anymore and that wasn’t going to help her accomplish her goals.”
After high school, Ayeva hoped to become a college cheerleader or softball player.
Her mom and stepdad, Shaun Cartwright, contacted Zach Vargo, who ran The Athletic Proving Grounds, a fitness and training facility for seventh graders through college that operates in Tipp City and Minster, too.
His “Vargo Trained” programs especially helped athletes prepare for their particular sport and Ayeva wanted to become a more powerful softball player and a more explosive cheerleader.
A former strength and conditioning coach and a football coach, Vargo had worked at Troy Christian, Dayton Christian and in the Dayton Public Schools system. He was the head football coach at Ponitz High.
As Ayeva began to work with him, he noticed she was especially strong for such a small person.
“Getting into powerlifting was a freak thing,” Ayeva said. “I was just deadlifting and Vargo was like ‘Hey, that’s a lot of weight!’
“We looked it up and it as what the state champ had done the year before. And he said, ‘I think you ought to be a powerlifter.’”
He spoke to her parents, but it took some convincing.
“At first, as parents, we had a lot of reservations,” her mom said. “You think of big body builders and steroids and I thought, ‘This is not what our little daughter is.’”
But Vargo went through the training regimen with them and alleviated their fears.
“The program was geared to softball and getting her sharper and faster and more explosive,” Vargo said. “But she has a natural build for weightlifting. She’s petite, but she’s compact and she has a great work ethic. And when she wants something, she’s driven to get it.”
When they saw she was lifting close to the state record, he talked to her and her parents and they decided to made a run at the mark.
She finished as the state runner-up last year and this season she tied the deadlift record – 300 pounds – twice before Kenton.
She lifted 300 pounds again on her third attempt at state and that allowed a fourth lift for the record.
“I was so scared I wasn’t gonna get it because 300 had been such a struggle that day,” she said.
Her family was at the competition and just before the record attempt her mom moved into the front row, right in front of her.
“She was in a zone and I don’t know if she even saw us,” Rachel said.
“I remember my entire body was tense. I almost felt like I was lifting the weight with her. I was just so nervous. Everyone was cheering and screaming for her and so was I.
“Once she completed her lift, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. It was like I sat the weight down too. We were proud of her, but more so I remember thinking ‘Oh my gosh! I’m so excited for you!’”
College aspirations
“When Ayeva was about 10, I built her a trophy shelf,” her mom said. “The shelf is maybe four feet long and it’s three feet high and has these little knobs on it so she can hang her medals.
The shelf – attached to bedroom wall in the family home on six acres south of Tipp City – is now overloaded, Ayeva said.
Along with the hardware she got for the state powerlifting record, the trophy Ayeva is most proud of is the one she and her high school teammates won when they captured the Miami Valley League’s cheering crown last October. It was the first time the school had ever won the title.
The school is commemorating it with a large banner that will hang in the gym next to similar ones honoring other championship teams.
Tippecanoe views cheerleading as a sport, as do many other high schools and colleges.
The American Medical Association recognizes cheerleading, as well, and so does the International Olympic Committee, which last summer granted full recognition to the International Cheer Union, the sport’s governing body.
The NCAA does not recognize cheerleading as a sport, nor does the U.S. federal government when it comes to Title IX adherence.
And yet like other sports, cheerleaders compete for national titles, are recruited by schools, risk some of the most serious injuries any athletes can suffer and often practice more hours than the college football team, whose participatory hours are regulated by the NCAA.
Much of Tilley’s time is spent in practice, whether it’s with her high school cheer and track teams, working out at the Athletic Proving Grounds – three or four times a week – and doing stunt work on weekends at Tumble U. in Piqua with training partner Brandon Payne.
She wants to cheer in college and according to American Cheerleader Magazine, some 225 colleges and junior college offer full or partial scholarships.
“I dream of getting recruited and having a signing day here at school for it,” she said.
Vargo, for one, thinks she’d be great addition to a college program:
“Her goal is to be at someplace like UD or some other major college and be one of those cheerleaders who does stunts and gets thrown up in the air. She’d really get a place pumped up. She’d be somebody who could really lift the people up.”
Quite literally.
After all, she’s Turbo Tilley.
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