Carla Garrett had enough of her football players' immaturity early in her first year as Salpointe Catholic's strength coach.
So one day in 2006 she declared what she knew as fact.
"Nobody in this room," she said, "is stronger than me."
That team featured Kris O'Dowd, the future all-conference center at USC.
"I could squat and clean more than Kris in his senior year," she said. "Kris could bench more than me."
Yeah, Garrett was strong. Still is, six years and two surgeries later.
This month, she was honored for it.
The 44-year-old was one of two inductees into the USA Weightlifting Hall of Fame.
The former UA track and field standout was a USA Weightlifting national champion from 1991 to 1994 in the 82.5 kilogram-plus category.
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"For that stretch, I was literally on top of the world," she said.
She won two silver medals - in the 1991 and 1993 world championships - after being encouraged to lift competitively by former Arizona Wildcats thrower and strength coach Meg Ritchie.
Ritchie was, for years, the only female strength coach in Division I-A sports, and mentored Garrett to follow her lead.
Garrett worked as a strength coach at the UA from March 1994 to May 2002, training Lute Olson's basketball teams and Mike Candrea's softball squads.
She now trains the Salpointe boys basketball, baseball and football squads - having long ago earned the respect of her male pupils - as well as Pima's women's basketball team.
"I really enjoyed weightlifting, I think, because you have to be an athlete to do it," Garrett said. "I could teach my mother how to bench and squat. You have to be an athlete to clean and snatch.
"It changed my outlook on how to be explosive. That translated across sports."
Olympic-style weightlifting consists of two events - the snatch and the clean and jerk. The women's event didn't debut in the Olympics until 2000.
Otherwise, Garrett could have participated in two Olympic sports.
She made the 1992 Olympic team in the discus, a discipline in which she starred at the UA. In 1989 alone, she won the NCAA indoor and outdoor shot put titles, as well as the discus event.
"I tell people when I first made the Olympic team, it's like you had a lottery scratcher ticket and you realized that you won," the UA Sports Hall of Famer said. "It was unbelievable."
She was away from her Olympic Village dorm room one day in 1992, visiting her mother, when the Dream Team came by. When she returned to the dorm, the basketball-crazy Garrett was shown a picture of Scottie Pippen sitting on her bed.
How's that for a memory?
"Walking in the (1992) opening ceremonies is probably the highlight of my life," she said. "I come from a town of 50,000 in northern New Mexico, and I'm walking in as one of the best athletes in the world.
"It was a proud moment for me, and for my mom."
It was so meaningful, in fact, that Carla will travel to New Mexico to watch Friday's opening ceremonies with her mother.
Not before talking to Lancers lifters, though.
She'd rather they learn about her hall of fame honor from me.
"I told a couple of kids. They're not easily impressed with certain things," she said. "So I want them to read about it.
"Then they'll be like, 'How come you didn't tell me, Coach?' "
