Marsee swept state, regional and district titles, helped Suwannee win the Class 1A championship
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Suwannee’s Matti Marsee is the LCR’s Girls Weightlifter of the Year. (COURTESY)
LIVE OAK — Matti Marsee grew up in the gym.
Literally.
Her father, Dan, owned a gym when she was born, leading to a life surrounded by weights.
But weightlifting wasn’t Marsee’s first love. No, that was tennis. And tennis is what led Marsee to the gym on her own and, eventually, to becoming the Lake City Reporter’s Girls Weightlifter of the Year.
“Serena Williams was the coolest person ever to me,” Marsee said of tennis, which she started seriously playing in the second grade. “And dad was like, ‘If you want to be like her one day, you’ve got to start lifting weights.’
“So I was like, ‘I’m going to start doing that.’”
She’s still doing that.
Marsee, a Suwannee junior, repeated as an individual state champion in the 110-pound division of the Class 1A state meet Feb. 12 at SHS. That championship lift of 300 pounds — 145 in the bench press and 155 more in the clean and jerk — also helped SHS to the team title, the first girls team to win a state championship in Suwannee school history.
Those titles, that success, were sparked first by disappointment. As a freshman in 2019, Marsee headed into the state meet as the top-ranked lifter in Class 1A’s 110-pound class.
She left the state meet with a fourth-place finish.
“That meet, I’m so thankful for, looking back,” she said. “To this day, I still see that fourth-place medal and I’m like, ‘Dang, can we just throw that away.’ But at the end of the day I think I needed that at that point in time more than anything else.
“I hate the fourth-place medal, but I’m very thankful for it. Because I wouldn’t have won state these past two years if it weren’t for getting fourth my freshman year.”
Marsee also wouldn’t have won state the past two years without a lot of hours in the weight room.
After that fourth-place finish, she also began participating in USAW travel weightlifting. That effort began with an eye on improving her chances of winning state for SHS.
“Now I take it just as serious as I take high school weightlifting,” Marsee said, adding she spends her high school offseasons with the travel program, although the two seasons overlapped this past year due to the covid-19 pandemic.
That led to a youth national meet in December where Marsee finished third. This year’s nationals are in June in Detroit.
“It’s made a huge difference,” Marsee said of the travel circuit. “It’s made me a lot more competitive. It’s definitely helped me deal with stress more, the competitive stress.”
Also helping Marsee prepare for the competitive stress of big meets like the state competition is a deep Suwannee program in which the Bulldogs push and motivate each other.
The result? Three straight district team titles, two straight region crowns and the state title. The past two years, Suwannee has qualified its entire team — all 20 lifters — to the regional meet.
“I think that’s the reason we are so successful because they push each other,” SHS coach Brittney Shearer said. “There’s always somebody that wants that spot. They work really hard day in, day out to do the best they can.”
Leading that push is Marsee, who Shearer described as a perfectionist and “probably the hardest worker on my team.”
That work has Marsee already looking ahead to her senior season where she aims for her third straight title and a second consecutive team championship. But that’s not all.
“Win as a team. I then I want to win individually too, but I really want to win as a team first,” she said.
“But then I want to break the state record (180 pounds set by River Ridge’s Callista Durrett in 2017). That’s my goal for next year. I want to break it on clean and jerk.”
ALL-AREA TEAM
110: Matti Marsee
Suwannee, junior
The LCR’s Girl’s Weightlifter of the Year repeated as the Class 1A state champion with a 290 total — 65 more pounds than the runner-up. She helped Suwannee win the program’s first team title as well, capping off a remarkable season where she was also the District 1-1A champion and Region 1-1A champion.
101: Katie Griffith
Fort White, sophomore
Won the Class 1A state title in the 101 class with a 275 total to cap off a season where she also won the Region 1-1A title and was runner-up in District 4-1A.
101: Aislinn Henry
Suwannee, senior
Placed fourth in Class 1A after winning the District 4-1A title and finishing third in Region 1-1A, posting totals of 255 at all three meets.
119: Haleigh Ray-Harris
Branford, junior
Placed third in Class 1A with a 265 total, matching the number that won her the District 4-1A title before she went on to finish third in Region 1-1A.
129: Sophia Baldwin
Suwannee, Sophomore
Placed third in Class 1A with a 305 total after winning the District 4-1A and Region 1-1A titles, which included a 315 total at regionals.
139: Evie Pitts
Branford, junior
Won the Class 1A state title in the 139 class with a 375 total to cap off a season where she also won the Region 1-1A title and was runner-up in District 4-1A.
139: Tyra Kalandyk
Suwannee, junior
Was runner-up in Class 1A, losing a weight tiebreaker for the title with a 355 total. She also won the District 4-1A title and was runner-up in Region 1-1A.
154: Carson Frier
Suwannee, senior
Wrapped up her career by placing fourth in Class 1A with a 305 total after winning the District 4-1A title and finishing third in Region 1-1A.
183: Maddie Carte
Suwannee, sophomore
Won the District 4-1A title and Region 1-1A title before placing third in Class 1A, where she lost a weight tiebreaker after a 330 total.
183: Reece Chasteen
Columbia, senior
Won the District 4-2A and Region 1-2A titles with totals of 375 before placing second at state, where she totaled 370 pounds and was 15 shy of first place.
COACH OF THE YEAR
Brittney Shearer, Suwannee
Shearer led the Bulldogs to their first state title as a team in program history. Fourteen lifters qualified for the Class 1A state meet under her watch, with Matti Marsee claiming the team’s lone individual title to help Suwannee edge Altha by five points. It capped off a season where Suwannee also won the District 4-1A and Region 1-1A championships.