When Angelina Dabney was a senior at Port Charlotte High School, she had a decision to make: Either continue playing soccer, or do something new and join the weightlifting team.
Dabney, 19, chose weightlifting and it was the best decision she ever made. She was a natural.
Last week at the USA Weightlifting Nationals in Pittsburgh, she won the Junior National championship (ages 18-20) in the 59-kilo weight class, defeating 20 other girls for the title.
Dabney lifted 86 kilos (190 pounds) in the snatch and 104 kilos (229 pounds) in the clean-and-jerk to take home the gold. She will go to Phoenix in December to compete in the national championships, for which she is training now.
Dabney called winning an amazing feeling, considering she hasn’t been in the sport very long and had to do it without family there to see her.
“It was a crazy feeling. I can’t explain it. There was so much emotion. Everything you’ve been working toward,” Dabney said. “I didn’t have my family with me because it was my dad’s birthday and they couldn’t afford to go. It was emotional because I did it for my dad.”
Dabney had played soccer most of her life before she started lifting as a senior at Port Charlotte, realizing that she had reached her ceiling in soccer. She hoped to be able to play both winter sports, but couldn’t, so she had to choose.
“My coach didn’t want me weightlifting at the same time and told me to pick a sport. I’d played soccer my whole life and hadn’t gotten very far with it,” Dabney said. “I did one year of weightlifting in high school and I was pretty good at it.”
Pretty good? Dabney won the District 2A-13 and Region 2A-4 titles in the 129-pound weight class to qualify for states and earn a scholarship at East Tennessee State University.
Wanting to be closer to her family, she came home after one semester and enrolled in cosmetology school. But she wanted to continue weightlifting. She joined Florida Elite Weightlifting and competed in USA Weightlifting events.
Dabney’s first National Championship in July 2023 in Colorado Springs saw her place third, which was great for someone with just three years of experience.
Dabney said it was unlike anything she had known before.
“I’m at Nationals and I don’t even know who these people are. I know some of the Florida girls because of the local meets,” Dabney said. “It’s great to go against so many great girls.”
That set her up for the great performance in Pittsburgh and for the training to compete again in December.
Dabney trains at Crossfit Murdock under the watchful eye of coach and owner Deb Kreinke, who said Dabney is a doer and not a talker, and pushes herself to achieve what she may not have believed was possible.
“A lot of people talk about doing things and don’t work to do them. It takes goal setting and goal achieving,” Kreinke said, who went to Pittsburgh with Dabney. “You can’t put yourself in a box and limit yourself. You have to push your way outside of the box. Crossfit is about being comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
Dabney will compete in some local meets this fall before heading the Arizona for nationals, for which she is looking to drop to the 55-kilo weight class in a more competitive age division.
“I won’t be in juniors anymore and I’ll be in the U23 open division, which means anyone over 20 can compete. It’s like pitting the freshmen against the seniors,” Dabney said. “I’m changing my diet and nutrition to make weight and hopefully make Team USA.”
In the future, Dabney said she would like to compete in the Olympics in 2028 in Los Angeles or the World Championships.
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