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Suwannee’s Ricardo Garcia is the LCR’s Boys Weightlifter of the Year. (COURTESY)
LIVE OAK — For four years, Ricardo Garcia stared at it: 200 pounds.
Suwannee High’s school record in the clean and jerk at 119 pounds was the second-oldest weightlifting mark in school history. The total lifted by Andy Bricker during his state championship campaign of 2000 was a constant reminder to Garcia of where he wanted to get and what he wanted to lift.
Four years and countless hours of work later, Garcia got his chance.
At the Region 1-2A meet at SHS on April 9, Garcia hoisted 205 pounds in the clean and jerk to break Bricker’s mark on the way to a regional title.
Two weeks later at the Class 2A state meet, Garcia did himself one better, resetting the school mark with a 210-pound lift in the clean and jerk and bringing home a handful of medals — individual golds in both the traditional event as well as the snatch, team gold in the snatch and team silver in the traditional.
“It was very emotional to say the least,” Garcia said of breaking the school record. “For four years, I’d seen that record up there. For four years, I wanted to break it. To finally do it, not only at my last meet at home but to go back at my own record that I had set, it was just an accumulation of years of work, sacrifices, just built up to that moment.”
That work and those sacrifices came with another reward: the Lake City Reporter’s Boys Weightlifter of the Year.
Garcia’s success was not a surprise.
Suwannee coach Dan Marsee, who was inducted in January into the Florida Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame for weightlifting, had been impressed by Garcia and his work since he walked into the weight room in 2019 as a freshman.
“Character and hard work, 100% with that kid,” Marsee said of what led to Garcia’s success. “From the time he was a ninth grader, he did everything the right way, busted his butt.”
In fact, when Garcia — who was a finalist for the Florida Dairy Farmers’ Mr. Weightlifting award as the top lifter in Class 2A — first entered the Bulldogs’ weight room as a freshman, Marsee could see the potential. He even called it despite the fact Garcia, at the time, could barely clean and jerk the bar.
“I looked at him and said, ‘I can make you a state champion,’” Marsee recalled of that first practice. “Just because of his movement patterns. He wasn’t an overly strong kid, but he was so coachable. I told him if he sticks with this, he would be a state champion.
“The first day he walked in and the first day we were teaching lifts, just to watch how he was such a sponger, we knew this was something special.”
Hearing Marsee’s belief and confidence was special to Garcia, too, who admitted he was a novice to the sport and to the weight room.
“To have a high school coach believe in me, saying that if you stick with it, you’ll be a state champion, it gave me hope,” Garcia said, adding he remembers that first practice “perfectly.”
“I didn’t think much of it but then he showed me and proved to me this could really be something I could do. It just pushed me to just go for it.”
While it took until this spring for Garcia to make Marsee’s prediction right, the coach said it could have and possibly should have happened much sooner.
As a sophomore in 2020, Garcia was one of the state favorites on a talented Suwannee roster. However, covid-19 wiped out the last portion of the season, including the state playoffs.
Last year, Garcia was humming along when he reinjured his back leading up to the state meet. The result? A fifth-place state finish.
“He’s went through everything you can imagine in a high school career,” Marsee said. “But he never quit, kept coming back. He just had the belief that hard work pays off, character pays off. Then, this year, he had the dream senior season.”
Even that dream season came with some rough parts.
Like when prior to the start of the year, that problematic back flared up again.
“It was a setback I wasn’t ready for, but a setback I’m grateful for,” Garcia said. “Because of that back injury I focused on the little things. I got my core right. That’s what pretty much gave way to how I performed. It was with Marsee’s help that we focused on getting my core back right so that my back wouldn’t take too much of a hit.”
Plus, Garcia — who won a national title in USA Weightlifting two summers ago and placed third last summer in the nation and is aiming for a third straight trip to nationals this summer — still had to make sure Marsee’s prediction came through.
It helped that he had some of those hardships to push him. Like that disappointing finish at state a year ago, which led to Garcia breaking down and crying.
“This year I just went in thinking, ‘This is my redemption,’” he said.
After winning the snatch with a lift of 160 pounds and then following it up with the traditional title with a combined weight of 405 pounds — school-best 210 in the clean and jerk along with 195 in the bench — Garcia found himself in a similar spot.
“I broke down and cried again,” he recalled. “But it was a different feeling. It was a feeling of satisfaction and gratefulness that I was able to do this.”
He was able to live up to that promise that Marsee saw in him long ago. That promise was another driving factor for Garcia.
“I didn’t really want to let him down to have said that and then I turn out to just not have it,” he said. “So I wanted to work toward that.”
ALL-AREA TEAM
119: Ricardo Garcia
Suwannee, senior
The LCR’s Boys Weightlifter of the Year swept Class 2A state championships in the traditional and snatch. Garcia totaled 405 to win the traditional title by 15 pounds and lifted 160 to win the snatch by 10 pounds. Both of those numbers were postseason-bests, capping off a postseason where he also swept District 3-2A and Region 1-2A crowns in each event.
154: Yael Hernandez
Suwannee, senior
Placed second in the snatch at the Class 2A state meet with a lift of 185 pounds — five pounds off of first — after winning the Region 1-2A title in the event with a postseason-best of 190 and placing second in District 3-2A. Hernandez also won the District 3-2A title in the traditional before placing third at regionals (postseason-best 475) and 12th at state.
169: Sam Wainwright
Suwannee, sophomore
Placed second in the traditional (postseason-best 580) and fourth in the snatch (210) to bring home medals from the Class 2A state meet. That came after he swept the District 3-2A and Region 1-2A titles in the traditional, and won the regional title in the snatch with a postseason-best of 215 pounds following a district title.
169: Will Wainwright
Suwannee, sophomore
Brought home two medals from the Class 2A state meet, placing fourth in the traditional (560) and third in the snatch (215) with postseason-bests in each event. That followed runner-up finishes at districts and a runner-up finish in the traditional at regionals that was coupled with a sixth-place finish in the snatch.
183: Garrison Beach
Suwannee, senior
Won the Class 2A state title in the snatch with a postseason-best 230 pounds to take first by 25 pounds, capping off a season where he also won the District 3-2A and Region 1-2A titles. Beach also placed fifth at state in the traditional with a postseason-best 580 total to grab a medal after finishing second at both districts and regionals.
183: Noah Morris
Columbia, senior
Brought home a state medal with a fourth-place finish in Class 2A in the traditional with a total of 585 pounds to cap off a season where he won the District 3-2A and Region 1-2A titles. Morris posted a postseason-best 600 total at regionals.
199: Zaher Darwiche
Columbia, junior
Swept District 3-2A and Region 1-2A titles in the traditional and went on to take seventh at the Class 2A state meet, where he tied his postseason-best with a total of 590 pounds.
199: Brandon Robinson
Suwannee, junior
Placed second in the snatch at the Class 2A state meet with a postseason-best 210 pounds after winning the District 3-2A and Region 1-2A titles in the event. Robinson grabbed another medal at state with a fifth-place finish in the traditional with a postseason-best total of 590 following a fourth-place finish at districts and a third-place finish at regionals.
219: Tony Fulton
Columbia, junior
Won the District 3-2A title in the traditional and placed third in Region 1-2A to qualify for state, where he finished eighth in Class 2A with a 600 total. Fulton posted a postseason-best 610 at regionals.
219: Tyrell Peterson
Columbia, junior
Placed fifth in the traditional at Class 2A state meet with a postseason-best 620 total for a spot on the medal stand. That followed a runner-up finish in District 3-2A and a fifth-place finish in Region 1-2A.
219: Austin Smith
Suwannee, senior
Placed second in the snatch at the Class 2A state meet with a total of 220 pounds after sweeping District 3-2A and Region 1-2A titles, which included a postseason-best 225 at regionals. He placed ninth in the traditional at state with a postseason-best 600 total after coming in third at districts and ninth at regionals.
238: Julius Moreland
Columbia, senior
Placed second in the traditional in the Class 2A state meet with a postseason-best 665, five pounds away from defending his state title. Moreland was the runner-up in both District 3-2A and Region 1-2A.
COACH OF THE YEAR
Dan Marsee, Suwannee
Marsee led the Bulldogs to the Class 2A state title in the snatch and a second-place finish in the traditional, which included three individual titles. Fourteen of his lifers qualified for state, with Ricardo Garcia winning state titles in the traditional and snatch while Garrison Beach won another in the snatch. It was the end to a stellar season for Suwannee, which swept District 3-2A and Region 1-2A titles in both the traditional and snatch.