Rylee Reeves – Youngest Female Athlete to Medal at the IUKL World Championships

Photos by Claire Davies

Just days after her 15th birthday, Albany High School (California) sophomore Rylee Reeves became the youngest female athlete in history to earn a medal at the IUKL Kettlebell Sport World Championships.

Rylee has been training with kettlebells at Ice Chamber since she was six years old. Her journey started when her parents (still members of Ice Chamber) joined the local gym 10 years ago to lose weight and get fit. Rylee, while accompanying her parents to the gym, assimilated to the sport by watching her role models, the renowned Ice Chamber Kettlebell Girls, train and compete at regional and national events.  Originally Rylee used kettlebells for fitness, as intervention for her ADD and other sensory regulation symptoms. Her coaches Sara Nelson and Steven Khuong noticed Rylee’s uncanny ability to pick up great technique quickly at a young age and encouraged her to give competition a go.  Although she took a hiatus from kettlebells to try group sports (such as soccer), she soon realized that she favored the solitude of Girevoy Sport.

By the age of 11, Rylee began to compete on the regional, national, and international circuit. At the 2014 IUKL World Championships in Hamburg, Germany, Rylee placed 4th out of 12 athletes, competing as a junior in the amateur adult division lifting a 16kg kettlebell.

This year, she moved into the elite bracket in Dublin, Ireland. On November 27, at just 15 years old, Rylee achieved 80 repetitions with the 24kg kettlebell in the junior professional division, earning a bronze medal for Team America. Simultaneously, Rylee became the youngest athlete in Kettlebell Sport history to medal in the professional division at the IUKL Kettlebell World Championships.