Rendina comes out of state powerlifting meet with world’s best total

One way to explain the sport of powerlifting is it combines a field events approach with the weight classes of wrestling, and adds a platoon of 45-pound discs.

“You get three attempts at each lift,” Jake Rendina said this week. “Your first attempt, you go for something you’ve done in training. Your second attempt is a PR — a personal record.

“Third attempt is sort of a, ‘Well, let’s see how crazy we can get here.’”

Rendina, the Glacier High senior, got pretty crazy at Helena Capital High School last weekend. In the USAPL-sanctioned Montana State championships, he put up 391.3 pounds in the bench press, 628.3 in the dead lift and then got a rep in at 600.8 pounds in the squat.

His total — 1,620.4 — unofficially makes him No. 1 in the world among teens (age 18-19) in the 242-pound weight class, raw equipment.

This is unofficial because meet results haven’t been updated to the rankings at openpowerlifting.org. The listed No. 1, a Wisconsin lad named Zach Roovers, has a total of 1,559.7 pounds that dates to March 5. Rendina went 60 pounds above and beyond.

Most of us know Rendina for his record-setting rushing totals on the football field at Glacier, which paved his way to a spot at West Point with the Army Black Knights.

Always into weight training, he caught the attention of Glacier football assistant Donny Tudahl — a Bigfork product who played football at Montana State — while working out with former Montana Grizzlies strength coach Mike Gerber a few years ago.

“He was a fullback in college for the Cats,” Rendina said. “We have similar body types. He asked, ‘Hey, you want to do a powerlifting meet?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’

“We trained every day together going into my first national meet. He’s been my mentor, colleague and training partner for going on three years.”

That first national meet, in San Antonio in 2021, went swimmingly: “I won the open-275, and he won the junior-225,” Tudahl said. “We both take it pretty seriously, being from Montana, when they maybe don’t take us as seriously in this sport.”

Both have been going strong ever since.

At the state meet Rendina was the best in a meet that was heavily attended by Helena athletes, though Tudahl noted Columbia Falls’ Chance Spahlberg also won his weight class.

“I walk around at about 252 pounds,” Rendina said. “I’m a big boy. There’s a little bit of a weight cut, like in wrestling.”

On the bench he lifted 352.7 pounds, then 374.8, then 391.3. In the squat he went from 551.2 to 589.7 to 600.8.

“In the dead, I missed at 589.7 — I smoked the weight, but I threw it,” Rendina said. “You’re supposed to control it all the way to the ground, and I was so amped up I threw it.”

He got 628.3 on his next attempt, and missed at 653.5 on technique.

In 2020 the Montana High School Association added powerlifting as a sanctioned sport but a lack of solid numbers — and Rendina was the only Kalispell athlete in Helena — led that to be tabled.

“I knew it was going to be difficult,” Tudahl said. “I was glad it was at least on the radar. It’s a very positive sport. In so many sports there’s a lot of chippiness and negative energy. This sport just across the board is phenomenally positive.”

Rendina is certainly a positive force.

“Just a phenomenal kid,” Tudahl said. “Dude works his butt off. He’s a great worker, and anything you ask him to do, he does to the best of his abilities — which are not necessarily God-given. He’s been working his butt off forever.”