Central High senior breaks 30-year weightlifting record in Weeki Wachee

Abraham Clemetson’s 325-pound lift at Weeki Wachee High School gave Central High School a new benchmark and added another chapter to Brooksville sports history. The senior’s mark in the unlimited weight class broke the Bears’ second-highest school record, a 320-pound lift that had stood since 1994, and came with the kind of personal weight that made the moment matter far beyond the platform.

Clemetson set the record at about 5:15 p.m. on March 25, near the end of the 2025-26 Florida High School Athletic Association boys weightlifting season. The regular season opened Feb. 2 and ended March 27, placing his lift squarely in the final stretch of county and district competition. Bryan Goolsby’s 445-pound lift from 1996 remains Central’s all-time school record.

The achievement landed in a program that already had momentum. Central won the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference boys weightlifting title in Olympic lifting on March 12, finishing above the other four Hernando County public schools, and the Bears have been one of the county’s most successful weightlifting programs in recent seasons. Paul Kern, Central’s coach, was named boys weightlifting Coach of the Year after the Bears’ conference championship run and a roster that included five all-conference lifters in Olympic lifting.

Clemetson had been lifting for two years and worked toward the mark with purpose, but his drive was tied to family as much as competition. He wanted the season to honor his late grandmother, and that goal carried special meaning for his mother, Demetria Clemetson, as the family grieved her mother’s death around the same time the season was ending. Abraham Clemetson said his season was for his grandmother, and with county competition in his weight class so strong, he focused on the school record after shifting his hopes away from a gold medal.

The broader historical context makes the lift stand out even more. The Florida High School Athletic Association does not have electronic boys weightlifting records before the 1999-2000 school year, which leaves older school marks like Central’s 1994 and 1996 records as especially important local touchstones rather than entries in a statewide digital archive.

For Central, the record is more than a number on a scoreboard. It connects a senior’s personal tribute to a program with deep roots in Hernando County, and it gives younger Bears a hometown standard to chase long after the 2026 season closed.