DILL BRINGS HOME THE HARDWARE
TROY, NY » When Angie Dill was young, she saw her brothers wrestling and thought that it might be fun. Late last month, she competed in the Cadet World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, as a member of Team USA and took home a bronze medal, with Team USA taking the gold.
“I was very honored to be there. You don’t get to go to an international tournament everyday,” Dill said. “It was really cool for me, because I’ve never been to an overseas tournament. It was very professional and it was really, really cool.”
Dill is a rising junior at Cambridge High School, doing the bulk of her wrestling training out of Curby Training
Center in Troy.
“As her coach, I was really impressed with how she navigated the travel, communicated with her Team USA coaches and how she competed with confidence,” said Joe Uccellini, Dill’s coach at Curby. “This is her sport, we want her to enjoy it and challenge herself and the results will take care of themselves. In this tournament it was a World Bronze Medal, which is really cool.”
She competed in the 43 kg (about 95 pound) division, against ten other wrestlers, each representing different countries. She did so without her usual coach, Uccellini, who was in North Dakota with some of Dill’s Curby teammates, at a national tournament.
“It was super nerve-racking for me,” she said. “Just in general, I have trouble keeping myself under control and keeping my nerves in check during tournaments. I was definitely extremely nervous to compete so far away, without Joe or any coaches I had really worked with before.”
The Team USA coaches were in her corner and when she stepped on the mat, all those nerves went away.
“Once I step out onto the mat, everything just disappears and I’m in game mode,” she said. “Once I won my first match, it made me feel more confident, I felt like I could do even better in the next match.”
The United States women’s team achieved the top score in the tournament, with 149. India got the silver at 139 and Russia the bronze, 134.
In May, Dill earned a spot on the 2021 Junior US Team, allowing her to make the trip to Hungary. However it wasn’t her first time competing on the world stage, having previously wrestled at the Pan American Games.
“I definitely started wrestling as a hobby, but I’ve really become more serious about it. I’d like to use it to get into college,” Dill said.
She credits her increased interest in the sport to Curbys.
“The environment is really great to be around here. It’s so fun and exciting, it’s not all just hard hard work. Yes, we do hard work, but it’s also about having fun and that’s one of the things that Joe always talks about.”
“Our mission statement here is work hard, have fun, don’t quit,” Uccellini added. “‘Have fun’ is the most important because if you love your sports, you’ll probably challenge yourself to do it a little more and a little better.”
With the summer tournament season nearing its end, the next area of focus for Dill will be her junior season with Cambridge Salem.
“The high school season is folkstyle, which I definitely don’t prefer. During the freestyle season, nationally, I only wrestle girls. During the folkstyle season, I wrestle boys,” she explained. “I didn’t get to wrestle in school this past year because I got quarantined, but the year before I was 83 pounds going against 106 pounders. In the freestyle season I get to go against people my own weight and my own gender and it’s more flexible.”
“I find it kind of funny, I don’t feel a lot of pressure on me because I’m not expected to win in the folkstyle season and I’m just kind of playing with house money. If I don’t win, I don’t win. I think it really just sets me up for the freestyle season, it lets me know what I need to work on.”