LSUS to host American Open weightlifting meet
11/19/04

The LSUS USA Weightlifting Development Center will host the USA Weightlifting American Open championships Friday-Sunday, Dec. 3-5. The competition, to be held in the University Center Theater on the LSUS campus, is free and open to the public. Event times will be posted on the Center’s Web site – www.lsus.edu/weightlifting/ – beginning Thursday, Dec. 2.

Dr. Kyle Pierce, an LSUS associate professor of kinesiology and health science and director of the Center, said 184 competitors have entered the tournament. The number of entries is down slightly from recent American Open events. “We expect to have a small drop in entries in the meet immediately following the Olympic Games,” Pierce said. Among the entrants are eight local lifters, including four LSUS students.

LSUS students are freshmen Tully Covington, (Parkway High School); Kendrick Farris (C. E. Byrd High School); Felisia Stokes (Banning, Calif.), and sophomore Monica Davis, a Booker T. Washington High School product. Also competing are Cody Gibbs, a BPCC freshman who attended Northwood High School; Jennifer Hutchinson, a student at Captain Shreve High School; Michelle Sicard, a senior at Loyola College Prep High School who plans to enter LSUS next fall, and Rose Pettiette, an eighth grader at Caddo Middle Magnet School who has been lifting with Pierce for three years.

Pierce said Pettiette is among the youngest and at 100 lbs. is likely to be the smallest competitor in the meet. She and her brother David, a sixth grader at Caddo Middle Magnet, will be guest lifters at the Quebec Junior Championships in Canada Thanksgiving weekend. The Quebec junior weightlifting team comes to Shreveport each summer to train for two weeks with Pierce at the LSUS USA Weightlifting Development Center.

The 2004 USAW American Open is the 17th major national and international competition hosted by LSUS. The university will also host the 2005 Pan American Championships and the 2006 National Championships.

National competitions held on the LSUS campus include the National Collegiate/Age 23 & Under in 2001, 2002 and 2003; the National Collegiate Championships in 1991, 1993, 1995 and 2000; the National Championships in 1996, which were nationally televised, and 2001; the 2000 National Junior Championships, the 2001 American School-age Championships, and the 1992 American Open. LSUS also hosted the 1998 National Collegiate Championships at the Shreveport Civic Center.

International competitions held on the campus were the NACACI (North America, Central America & Caribbean Island) Championships in 1996 and 2000, and the Junior International Championships in 1995.

For information about the American Open or the LSUS USA Weightlifting Development Center, contact Pierce at 318-795-4241 or kpierce@lsus.edu.