Worldly Experience: Vermilion Catholic graduate Lene’ Romero brings back sixth place medal
by William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor
During the past five years of evolving from a novice powerlifter to world competitor, Vermilion Catholic graduate Lene’ Claire Romero’s tried dispelling myths for females involved in the sport.
“That’s one of my favorite things about the outcome of all of this,” Romero said. “I want to be someone that someone else looks up to, and this is giving me that chance. There’s a stigma around powerlifting with girls, ‘I don’t want to be buff or wear a singlet’. To have girls in a sport like this with weights, grunting and otherwise ‘manly things’, it’s good for girls to have a sort of confidence and think, ‘I can be strong, too’.”
Romero, a champion at both the LHSAA state championship and national competition earlier this year, recently returned from San Jose, Costa Rica, where the native of Abbeville placed sixth in the International Powerlifting Championship. Lila Cooper, a 123-pound Division I state champion this spring from Covington High, was fourth in the 138-pound division, where three pounds separated her and Romero.
“I gave it my everything,” Romero said. “It was so cool to hear all of the different languages.”
Romero returned home at 1 a.m. on Aug. 28 after the four-day trip to begin her first day of classes at the University of Louisiana.
She took a life’s worth of memories, representing the United States for the first time, which won the IPF World team title with 50 points. Columbia was second (38), Ecuador (32), Chinese Taipei (20) and Finland (18) rounded out the top five teams.
“It was awesome,” Romero said. “This is something I never thought was going to happen. When I went to nationals, I didn’t think I was going to win. The whole country has a lot of people. This was going to be something fun for me and my dad (Jeremy) to do. All of a sudden, I’m on the national team. It was a little surreal. It was beautiful (Costa Rica). I’m a sucker for rainforests. It was really pretty, and the weather was great.”
Instead of allowing herself totally to enjoy the moment, Romero, the competitor, surfaced with plenty of questions afterward.
Isabel Ugalde of Costa Rica took the 138-pound crown, but the remainder of the leaderboard was a scramble that left Romero thinking about what may have been. She was 30 pounds out of second, 20 pounds separated her from third, and three pounds out of fourth.
She managed a three-lift total of 941 pounds with a nagging back injury that nearly resulted in the cancellation of the trip.
“I was having some serious back issues, where I couldn’t pick up 132 pounds two weeks before I left,” she said. “I had to take extra rest. That’s stressful when you have something that big and you’re forced to tone that down a bit. I don’t like toning things down. The day that I lifted, I warmed up and went out there for all three lifts. My mom mentioned at one point we weren’t going to go because of how bad it was.
“Before we left, I slept at a friend’s house, and when I got home, I stretched because it hurt so bad walking around,” she said. “The stretches I thought would help ended up making it worse. It’s difficult for me to think that way (respectable sixth-place finish) because I consider myself an extremist. It was difficult dealing with my back, but I understand things happen. It’s about resilience.”
Romero traced the origin of her injury three years ago to a small invitational meet.
The sacroiliac or SI joint, she believed, was at the root of her discomfort, causing pain, stiffness, and instability, which some experts believe is a result of overuse.
“My body was trying to tell me to cool it down,” she said.
Rest is a preferred avenue, and with her dad a chiropractor by trade, Romero wasn’t deterred in competitions where adrenaline also allowed her to persevere.
“I didn’t find it detrimental at worlds, but it affected it,” she said of the pain that occasionally shot down into her leg. “My dad’s done a great job of treating me. A normal case would be to maybe tone down the weight, take it back a notch, but this was a horrible time to do that, so I couldn’t do that.”
Romero’s performance in the squat and bench was consistent with past marks.
She was fourth in the squat with a best of 380 pounds, and her 247-pound bench press was second best.
The deadlift, though, fell short of expectations when her back flared up and resulted in a 314-pound mark, good enough for sixth place.
“Before we left, I did 340 and everything moved all right,” Romero said. “The plan was to go 315, 336, and 345, but my back wouldn’t let me. I watched a video of the deadlift, a weight that I had done a plethora of times, and I’m going up, and all of a sudden, my body started to shift to the right, which has never happened before. I don’t like excuses. The only thing I could think of was my back and why I was doing that. I could have been the (body) suit.”
Romero trailed only Finland’s Ninni Kopola (259) on the bench, who also won the squat (430). Romero was only 8 pounds out of second and three pounds out of third in the squat.
Weightlifting didn’t have much of a purpose in Romero’s life until the end of the seventh grade.
A friend’s suggestion lit the fuse, and her own determination to lose weight turned into a full-fledged passion in the sport that’s led to success at several different levels.
“I really wasn’t serious the first year,” Romero said. “When someone mentioned that I might like it, I started doing it.”
Another catalyst in her development came from Vermilion Catholic’s former football and track coach, Ossie Blaize, who returned to the school in 2015. He remained there until retiring in 2022, but tried motivating Romero to think big in her new endeavor.
“When I made it to state as a freshman, I guess it was surprising,” she said. “I honestly showed up to these things and didn’t know what’s going on.”
Romero emerged as a serious contender during the Division V state championships with a pair of fourth place finishes as a freshman and sophomore. She was the state runner-up as a junior in 2024 before taking the award stand as a state champion in March.
She exploded during her senior season at 132 pounds, breaking the Division V state record for the squat (330) and bench (231), and her deadlift (335) was also the state’s composite mark. Her three-lift total of 896 pounds was 155 pounds better than second place.
Less than two months later, Blaize passed away at the age of 76.
“I was telling him about my numbers for my openers, and he told me if I didn’t win state at some point, he was going to come back and haunt me,” Romero said of Blaize. “He gave me some motivation. He saw it (potential) early on. It makes you think about what other people see in you before you actually see it in yourself.”
A month later, at the national event in Brookfield, Wisconsin, Romero put together a series at 128 pounds of a 330-pound squat, 231-pound bench, and 335-deadlift for a total of 895 pounds to win the event and was one of two competitors to qualify and represent the United States in the IPF World Championships.
Romero remained persistent with her five-day-a-week training, with her dad on hand three hours per workout in the summer. She was hopeful of a productive maiden voyage on the world stage.
“We worked together the entire summer,” she said. “He was right there with me.”
The start of college pushed Romero’s focus on academics to the forefront with the hope of resuming lifting in two to three weeks.
Because of her age, Romero’s able to remain competitive at the junior level (ages 18-23) where a new rush of adrenaline may serve as fuel to carry her forward. She also signed up for UL’s powerlifting team, which is a club sport, but that venture will also depend on her future health.
“My primary focus is rest, and I hate that,” Romero said. “The pain’s running down my leg, and that’s no fun. That may limit my abilities by the time I’m 35 because of this. My dad loves this so much. It’s his job as a chiropractor and my dad to think about my health and safety.
“He said to rest now, and we’ll talk about it later,” Romero said. “School and this have been my life for the last five years. I really do want to keep doing it. I don’t want to stop.”