When Anthony Kubin broke a state record about four months ago, he didn’t have much time to celebrate. His first task at hand was to try to break it again.
And wouldn’t you know it? He nearly did.
Only a technicality prevented the 18-year-old weightlifter from Everett from breaking his own dead-lift record of 523.5 pounds. Although he successfully lifted 551 on his next attempt, the lift was disqualified because judges ruled that he used his knee to help the bar on its way up.
“I got the bar caught on my knee, I stopped for a split second, and so they thought I rested it on my knee,” Kubin said of his performance at the WADBL Iron Gladiator Great Northern Bench Press and Dead Lift Championships in Olympia on March 24. “It just scraped against my knee. I’ve still got a mark to prove it.
“I was pretty (ticked) off, but what can you do about it?”
And that, Kubin said, will be the last competitive lift of his life. His lifting program will change now that he’s playing football at Feather River Community College in Quincy, Calif. And after that?
“The chances of going somewhere (to play professional football) are one in a million-and-a-half,” he said. “I’d love to play, even if it’s Arena ball. But if that doesn’t work out, I’m going into fighting. Boxing, kickboxing, something like that.”
As weightlifting goes, Kubin will have to settle for a dead-lift of 523.5 pounds, which is a state record for 220-pound individuals in the 18- and 19-year-old age group. That mark made years of hard work worth the effort.
The recent graduate of Cascade High School said he works out four to five days a week, between 3 and four hours per session. Even when he wasn’t in the weight room, Kubin worked strenuous odd jobs like digging holes and moving large equipment to help maintain his strength.
Kubin first got into weightlifting as a sixth grader in Smokey Point. He had a weight set at his father’s house, but never saw himself as a future record holder.
“I could never get past 185 (pounds) on the bench press, for some reason, when I got to eighth grade,” he said.
That all changed during his freshman year at Cascade High School, thanks in large part to an old family friend. Roger Kuebler, who worked with Kubin’s father, Joe, at Boeing, offered to help if Kubin was serious about lifting. Kuebler, who had trained several record holders over the years, pushed Anthony Kubin to levels he never thought possible.
He was bench pressing 245 as a freshman, and 305 as a sophomore. By his junior year, Kubin was bench pressing 365. And last year, his senior year at Cascade, Kubin once put up 445 pounds on the bench.
His body went through several transitions as well. He went from a 155-pound freshman to 180 as a sophomore, only to lose all that weight and more following the removal of his tonsils. Maintaining a diet that included 1,200-calorie sport shakes and four raw eggs per day, Kubin bulked back up but lost most of his speed. That’s when the Cascade football coaches made him switch from running back to offensive guard as a junior.
Kubin played well enough to receive interest from big-time football schools like Oregon, but grade problems and a two-game suspension for tobacco use during his senior year eventually drove the NCAA Division I offers away, he said.
Kubin opened enough eyes to get invited to the all-state game at Everett Memorial Stadium, and he hopes to play at a four-year school after putting in his time at Feather River.
After that, it could be on to the fight game for Kubin.
One thing he knows is that he won’t be doing anymore dead lifting.
“On my own, there’s no way I could do it,” Kubin said of the training he did under Kuebler’s watch. “You have to have someone to push you day in and day out. I can’t do it by myself.
“And with classes and football practice, I don’t know when I’m going to have time for a four-hour workout.”
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