An anticipatory crowd of students and faculty cheered on from afar as Team USA Olympic weightlifter and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga senior Olivia Reeves broke an Olympic record and took home gold Friday.
The watch party for Reeves, of Hixson, was held in the university’s Undergraduate Admissions Tour Center. The group erupted in applause each time the camera panned to Reeves and fell quiet whenever she approached the platform for a lift.
As Reeves made her way to the platform for her third snatch attempt, a woman in the audience broke the silence and exclaimed, “I teach her!”
It was Chandra Ward, an assistant professor of sociology at UTC. Moments later, Reeves earned a gold medal, Team USA’s first weightlifting gold in 24 years.
“It’s incredible,” Ward said in an interview after the event. “I’m just awestruck at her breaking world records and getting gold. Just an appearance is huge enough, but then to win gold.”
Reeves, a sociology major, took Ward’s introduction to sociology class at UTC. She’s also taken three courses taught by Zachary Simoni, who was at the watch party to support Reeves.
“I was not going to miss this,” Simoni said. “It was a special opportunity.”
Simoni described Reeves as having “a lot of humility” and Ward added that, when she taught her, she “had no idea Reeves was a world-class weightlifter.”
Nearly every seat in the room was occupied at the beginning of the event, and dozens of attendees lined the back wall. Terrence Banks, associate director of recruitment at UTC, dimmed the lights for each of Reeves’ six lifts.
“I don’t think most people know (UTC) by name, so to be represented on this kind of stage, I think is a big deal,” said Banks, who helped to coordinate the watch party. “It was a huge driving force behind wanting to put on this watch party for one of our students.”
Reeves came into the competition as the gold-medal favorite and succeeded in her first five lifts, to the delight of the home crowd. By the time she failed her final clean and jerk lift, she had already secured the gold medal.
(READ MORE: Olivia Reeves will be first UTC student to compete in Olympics)
Scarlett Vineyard, a USA weightlifting coach and UTC’s coordinator of fitness, was looking on from the back corner of the room. She’s worked with Reeves’ coach, Steve Fauer, in the past, she said.
“With the help of her coaches and going to competitions, you learn a lot along the way,” Vineyard said when asked about Reeves’ record-breaking run. “You learn how to get better, learn your strengths and learn how to push yourself more.”
The watch party thinned out after the snatch session and prior to the clean and jerk. Only a handful of loyal attendees stuck around for the medal ceremony, where a zoomed-in camera caught Reeves crying tears of joy.
A former high school classmate of hers at Notre Dame High School, Mark Mariani, stayed seated in the back row for the entirety of the competition.
“It’s not every day you get to see one of your classmates in the Olympics,” he said.
Contact Cameron McKeon at cmckeon@timesfreepress.com.
