Braintree high lacrosse player, powerlifter Bella Duffy has a lot on her plate

BRAINTREE − The sword was ... a little strange.

For 16-year-old Bella Duffy, success in powerlifting is its own reward. Over the summer, though, the Braintree High sophomore lacrosse star discovered that there can be actual, tangible benefits to achieving your goals.

Even if sometimes they don't seem to make a lot of sense.

Take this summer's RPS Southern Mass. Blast competition in Hanson, where Duffy not only won her weight class but was named best female lifter overall.

"They give out rinky-dink trophies a lot of times" at these events, Rob Ruggiero, Duffy's weightlifting coach, said, "but for the best lifter they actually gave out legit, iron-forged swords with 'Best Lifter' on them."

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"It was awesome," Duffy said. "I wasn't expecting it. I got it and I didn't know what to do with it. Right now it's just in my room. I'm hoping to hang it on my wall or something."

Is sword fighting her next hobby?

"Hey, you never know," Duffy said with a laugh.

'She's so strong'

For now, she's sticking with lacrosse as her lone varsity sport. She wants to play it in college, and she's off to a good start with 43 goals as a freshman last spring and 25 through Braintree's first eight games this season. No time for anything else on her plate, really.

Even though her dad did hint at diversifying her portfolio.

"Being a multisport athlete in high school myself, I said, 'You know, college coaches like it when you play more than one sport,'" said Keith Duffy, a former Division 1 college golfer. "Her response to me was: 'Powerlifting is 100% a sport.' After seeing her compete, I 100% agree."

Keith Duffy, who lives in Whitman, calls powerlifting "pretty hardcore," and Bella is fitting right in.

Consider her personal records so far:

She can bench-press 150 pounds. That's when you're flat on your back, pushing the barbell straight up and down. "Bench is using your chest (muscles), mostly," Bella Duffy noted. "That's growing on me a lot. I really like it now."

She can squat 250 pounds. That's when you move from a squatting position to a standing position and back down with the barbell behind your neck.

"I'm getting a lot better at squat," she said, "but mentally that's the hardest one. It doesn't feel as safe. But I'm getting more confident in it."

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And she's deadlifted 330 pounds. That's when the barbell is on the floor and you basically pick it up.

"It's my favorite lift; I love it so much," she said. "It's the most challenging. A big part of deadlift is mental. If you want it bad enough, you can get it."

If 330 pounds sounds like a lot for a 5-foot-4 teenage girl to lift, well, that's because it is.

"For a girl her size, that's pretty unreal," said Ruggiero, a competitive powerlifter himself who serves as the strength and conditioning coach for the Div. 1 football program at Stonehill College in Easton and the director of strength and conditioning at Atlantic Sports Performance in Hanover, where Duffy trains. "That could be close to a New England record. It could even be in contention, in some federations, for a national record."

"She's so strong," Duffy's mom, Meridith, marveled. "I'm amazed. I'm truly amazed, and I'm grinning from ear to ear when I speak of it, but I'm also not surprised. Because she's like no other. She gives 120% to everything that she does. This is her passion. She's made it her passion. And she loves lacrosse. She knows that (powerlifting) is going to help her (in lacrosse)."

All that strength has some domestic applications as well.

"She's the one (I ask) if we have to move the grill," Meridith Duffy said with a laugh. "I actually hate manual labor more than anything in the world. I love to lift at the gym, but I hate to lift anything outside the gym. But I know if I ask her to help me she'll be like, 'All right, come on, Mom, let's go! Let's do this!' We manage to move some things around."

A demanding schedule

Bella Duffy was at Atlantic Sports Performance last Friday after wrapping up lacrosse practice. That's her regular routine. She would hit the gym after home games too, but the varsity players like to stick around and cheer on the JV. If she doesn't feel like she's accomplished enough with her lifting during the week, she'll head over there on weekends to squeeze in a few more reps.

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"I loved it right away," said Duffy, who caught the weightlifting bug in seventh grade after tagging along to the gym with her mom, a former Braintree High cheerleader who became a fitness competitor as an adult. "As soon as I started, I knew this is for me. I love challenging myself in the gym, pushing myself, trying to be better every day. It's not like it's a job for me. It's not something that I have to do; it's something that I want to do."

"I've been training Bella for two years," said Ruggiero, "and she's definitely one of my favorite athletes to train just because she shows up and it's really important to her every single day."

Ruggiero had a brief NFL stint as a defensive end/linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts. Strange but true: he was on Indy's practice squad for the infamous AFC Championship Game on Jan. 18, 2015, that spawned the "Deflategate" controversy that eventually got Tom Brady suspended for the first four games of the 2016 season.

Ruggiero said Duffy's drive and work ethic reminds him of the Div. 1 college football players he now advises.

Bella's dad has worked with NHL players (during his time at Bauer Hockey, a sports equipment company) and PGA golfers (during his current gig at FootJoy, a golf clothing company).

"Being around professional athletes," he said, "I see a lot of what drives professional athletes in Bella."

She agrees that "driven" would be a good description of her personality.

"I'm 100% on everything that I do, even in school," said Duffy, who has a 4.26 grade-point average. "School is very important to me. I just really want to push myself in everything to be the best that I possibly can."

Paying dividends

Although powerlifting would seem to be an inherently individual sport, Duffy has been pleasantly surprised by the sense of community she's found.

"Everyone cheers for you," she said. "Everybody is happy for everybody else. That surprised me when I first went (to competitions). You see all these huge powerlifter people and you get scared (thinking they're hyper-competitive), and then they start cheering for you and being excited about you deadlifting however much weight. The more I do it, the more at home and comfortable with it I feel."

And even though the rules of girls lacrosse limit physical contact, especially compared with the boys' version of the sport, Duffy definitely thinks her powerlifting exploits are helping her there.

"You still see contact (in the girls game), and after I started lifting and gaining strength I felt like my shot got stronger, so I could shoot from further out," said Duffy, who has two younger sisters (Grace and Lyla) and a younger brother (Reese), all of whom are athletes. "My power everywhere (increased) − even in my legs when I would drive. I would push off further and it would help me fake my defender out. It really helped me all-around becoming a better player."

"She doesn't talk about it a lot," Braintree lacrosse coach Jillian Coene said of Duffy's powerlifting background, "but it shows. She's pretty strong. She's not afraid to get hit by anything, really. She's not afraid to drive anywhere, and that's a huge (asset) to have on the attacking side."

Coene also praised Duffy's lacrosse IQ, saying, "She knows when to make the right passes, when to hold the ball and spread the team out. Overall, she's a great attacker. I'm very, very lucky to have her. She's on a roll this season."

Keith Duffy says his oldest daughter's confidence, honed in those hours at the gym, has soared to the point where "she thinks she can beat anybody."

Her mom noted, "Bella was a quiet and reserved child. She really only spoke when spoken to. When she started to go to the gym, a year into it, she became a whole new person. The confidence was just spewing out of her. I definitely credit the gym for that and the community surrounding that and the community of powerlifting. They're really very supportive."

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Powerlifting unlocked Bella Duffy's lacrosse game at Braintree High