Making state history
Girls wrestlers set for their 1st championship tournament
The high school wrestling landscape was altered with the addition of girls teams to the sport this season.
“Just like anything else, they want an opportunity to compete,” said Arizona Interscholastic Association Executive Director David Hines. “If they can compete with their own gender, why wouldn’t we allow that?”
The first Arizona state championships for girls wrestling will be held Friday.
Allowing girls to compete against each other instead of against boys, it takes away the intimidation factor that was there in the past.
Breaking Gender Barriers
For many of the girls who wrestle, it was a sport that had been in their family for years. Growing up they had heard the tales of their fathers’ success on the mat or witnessed their brothers’ development in the sport.
“My dad was in wrestling since he was really little and he passed it on to my brothers,” Chandler sophomore Carla Rivas said. “Since they were younger, I’ve been trying to practice with them, but my dad always told me I couldn’t do the sport.”
It was a similar situation for Basha High School sophomore Amber Rodriquez, who has two older brothers already involved in Basha’s wrestling program.
“The coach actually came to me and said, ‘Hey, you should try out because your brothers are really good.’ So I came out and I fell in love with it,” Rodriquez said.
Some were determined to wrestle without a girls program, the path was just more difficult. Trinity Howard, a freshman at Basha, started wrestling in middle school and was the only girl on the mat.
“Being the only girl, it was definitely intimidating at times, but wrestling is in my family and what I’ve always wanted to do,” Howard said.
Meanwhile, some were introduced to wrestling through various forms of martial arts in their younger years.
“I started with judo when I was younger,” Chandler junior Stefana Jelacic said. “A lot of people who wrestled also did judo, and I was like ‘Oh, I want to try it’. That was in sixth or seventh grade, and when I stepped on the mat, I just fell in love.”
It’s a similar story for Rylee Bruce of Moon Valley. Bruce began wrestling because she wants to become a mixed martial artist, and her coaches told her she should give wrestling a shot.
Learning on the mat
Wrestling, like any sport, has life lessons it teaches along the way.
“Wrestling is the ultimate place to gain confidence in yourself and your abilities,” Basha senior Taylor Haney said. “You’re going to learn how to put yourself in an uncomfortable position, but be a strong person on the mat because if you’re shy and weak on the mat, you’re not going to be able to be efficient.”
Rodriquez echoed her teammate, and said she’s not only become stronger physically, but also mentally.
“In wrestling, if you lose control you start doing all of these crazy things that you normally wouldn’t do in a match and you’ll lose, so you have to really take control of yourself and have control of your emotions and you have to persevere through it,” Rodriquez said.
Bruce said wrestling has taught her how to cope with difficult situations in life.