Athlete of the Week: Haylee Garcia

Age 17 | School Brawley | Grade Senior

The Brawley girls’ wrestling team’s Napoleonic conquest of the CIF-SDS Division II wrestling finals at Santana High School on Saturday did not lack for heroes. It’s hard to win something by 172 points without plenty of people doing very, very well, and the Wildcats had plenty-and-a-half.

Eleven out of 14 weight-classes had a Wildcat in the championship round, and five of these finalists finished with individual gold.

Haylee Garcia was one of those five, fighting her way through the relatively crowded 113-pound bracket (some weights saw more wrestlers than others) and grabbing gold with a 2:51 pin of West Hills’ Chloe Tolentino in the final — not bad for someone with just three years’ experience and softball on the brain.

Finishing her senior season as best in the SDS “was definitely shocking,” said Garcia. “I didn’t ever think I would get this far in wrestling, especially because it’s not my first sport.”

In fact, forget finishing her season on top, Garcia almost didn’t wrestle at all this year.

“At the start of the season, I got a scholarship offer for softball, so I wasn’t sure if I should go on with wrestling or not (due to the injury risk),” she said, “But, I was like, ‘ I started it for a reason, so I have to finish.’ There was no going back.”

Garcia’s wrestling career was a very late addition to her sporting load, coming after a freshman year dalliance with basketball proved “really boring.”

Prodded by a “full family of wrestlers” she decided to give mat life a try as a sophomore and has had few regrets, believing that

the experience has helped her in other areas — mental and physical.

“Wrestling will definitely break you down, but it will also keep you motivated and focused. … I think it’s really helped with my mindset,” Garcia said, “There [is also] a lot of summer practices, a lot of lifting over the summer [and] you have to totally change the way you eat and make sure you drink enough water [but]

you really feel the difference, in a good way. You feel more energized.”

A naturally defensive wrestler, Garcia expects this year’s brandnew girls’ Masters event (at Steele Canyon High on Friday) to be full of aggressors looking for a fast clinch. She believes she’ll be able to take advantage of her opponents’ overreaches and is confident that she can book herself a ticket to the state championships.