CNJ+ September 2023

SUE GUNTHER’S UNEXPECTED JOURNEY By, Pam Teel

I was that girl who played in a slow pitch softball co-ed church league in middle school. Every night, after dinner, my dad took me outside to practice pitching. It paid off, we won a lot of games. There were not many High School athletic choices for girls in my day- so I was that girl who became a cheerleader. Fast Forward- I am that woman, married to my high school sweetheart, Hal, for fif ty -six years. I am the mother to six wonderful children and grandmother to eleven beautiful grandchildren. I am that woman who had participated in vari ous and sundry sports and ac tivities throughout my adult life and had loved every minute of it. Eventually I settled on tennis, which I played competitively for a number of years. This is where the plot thickens, because tennis was actually the catalyst in my becoming a weightlifter. The year- 2018. I began train ing with Patrick Manturi, a Sports Specialist Trainer, at the Centrestate Fitness Center. I was training with him to improve my tennis game. It worked. I was be coming stronger. Patrick noticed and one day asked me if I wanted to lift heavy things? My answer, “Well, I guess so.” And so, it be gan. At first very slowly and very gradually, and then, it hit the pause button because of Covid. Toward the end of 2021, I was actually training for my first Olympic Weightlifting compe tition. Olympic weightlifting consists of two specific lifts: The first- The Snatch, which is one movement that brings the barbell

Millstone resident, Sue Gun ther, never thought she would ever fulfill her dream of becom ing an accomplished athlete, especially not at her age. For a woman in her heyday, being athletic didn’t get you as far as the sport related opportunities that were open to men. There just wasn’t much offered. Sue, happily, settled into her role as wife, mother, grandmother, store owner (Old Monmouth Candies, Freehold), but as years went by, deep in her soul, there was an unfulfilled part of her life that kept nagging away at her. At this point in time, she felt in her heart that the window for her ever being recognized as an athlete had closed; so she thought. As the saying goes, never say never. If you asked her two years ago if she ever thought that she would be go ing to Poland, in August of this year, to compete in a Masters Olympic Weightlifting compe tition, even she would say that sounded crazy. But life some times takes us on unexpected journeys, and this is Sue’s jour ney in her own words: “Who am I? I am that girl who just might have been born be fore her time. Born when girls did not play sports, they wore dresses. But I had two big broth ers that I tried very hard to keep up with. I had a dad who was a four-letter man in Freehold High School, and I had a Pee Wee Re ese uniform that I wore to my brothers’ Little League games. I was that girl that went to the YMCA on Saturday mornings to

Sue Gunther Snatch Lift (26 kilos)

play girls basketball. By the way, at that point in time, girls’ basketball teams had six players, three forwards and three defense. You could only dribble twice before passing the ball. Only one forward player, the Rover, could cross the cen terline and dribble more than twice. And yes, I was the Rover. On Saturday af ternoons, I attended Miss Curly’s Etiquette Class. Guess which I preferred best!

from the floor to over your head. The second- The Clean Jerk- which is a two part lift. The first movement brings the barbell to your shoulders, the second takes it overhead. In any given competition, the lifter has three opportunities to make at least one qualifying lift in each of the two lifts, as per the discretion of the three

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CNJ+ | FORMERLY THE MILLSTONE TIMES

SEPTEMBER 2023