Ledyard female wrestler looking to make State Open history
LEDYARD — The bomb shelter in the basement of Ledyard High is typically full of wrestlers and mats on winter afternoons. With the schedule down to the State Open and Girls’ State Invitational, only a half-dozen train in the corner under the watchful eye of coach Allyn Quibble.
Freshman Tatianna Irizarry is working with Josiah Estriplet, who has qualified for the State Open by virtue of a sixth place at 113 pounds at the Class M championship. Estriplet weighed in 10 pounds heavier on this Tuesday and even when a challenging workout is completed, Irizarry is not happy with why a particular move is not working.
Quibble, a former twotime state champ at Ledyard, gets on the mat with Irizarry to demonstrate. Still not satisfied, they call Estriplet back. Finally, it is determined his size and strength is the culprit.
“Tatianna is always working to improve,” Quibble said. “She never gets broken mentally. She is not afraid to wrestle anybody. She never gets discouraged in a match. She always keeps her head and working to win. That’s how champions are born.”
There are 155 girls scheduled to wrestle this weekend at the Floyd Little Athletic Center. Only one — “Tati” Irizarry — will wrestle against the boys.
Irizarry, who placed third in Class M at 106, is looking to make history. No girl has won even one match at the State Open.
“I want to win one match,” she said. “After that wrestle to the best of my ability.”
Quibble set a higher bar: “I’d like to see her qualify for the New Englands.”
A total of 17 medals have been won by girls in CIAC
class meets dating to Jennifer Ottiano’s fifth-place finish in Class L in 1992. Eleven have come in the past two years, five on Saturday. Old Lyme’s Hoshena Gemme finished second in Class L and became only the second girl to reach a final.
“If I’m going to have a good chance at State Open to do decent, 106 is the weight it’s going to be,” Tatianna said. “Every other weight the guys are really strong and muscular. No matter how much I work out it gets to the point where I can’t keep up with them as far as strength. I have nothing to lose. I’m a freshman. I’m a female wrestler.”
Tati was 3 years old when she started wrestling. Her two older brothers wrestled and her first memories were playing with the siblings of other youth wrestlers at Griswold High.
“My dad was coaching and one time I was running by,” Tati said. “He put his arm out to stop me, walked me to the mat and we practiced for a few minutes.”
Then she went back to play. She became more and more involved. For anyone who develops a passion for a sport, there usually is a moment when they think, “I really like this. This is pretty cool.” Tati’s moment? “Probably just beating boys in wrestling,” she said. “I was like four or five.”
She laughs.
In January, she became the first girl to win at the Bristol Central Invitational. Irizarry did not wrestle at the Queen of the Mat girls tournament in late January. Stamford senior
Samantha Yap, who won at 107 that day, took sixth in Class LL and has twice won the Girls State Invitational, clearly would have been Tati’s challenge.
“After our first meet of the season, I was helping bring chairs back down to the basement,” Irizarry said. “I saw (former coach Steve Bilheimer), he looked at me and said, ‘At the end of the season, you’re going to have to make a tough choice.’
“I started laughing and said, ‘Oh, I’ll probably end up doing the girls states.’ I’m a girl. Everyone else is a girl. During the season I started having a pretty good record. Not that I didn’t think I wouldn’t, but I began thinking I can win girls states next year, junior year, senior year. I might only have a few chances to do well with the boys.”
Irizarry is already learning to deal with the pressure of attention. Take the recent ECCs.
“It was a big ado about being in the finals,” Quibble said. “They pulled 113 as the start weight. I know they wanted her to wrestle last, which a lot of coaches, me included, thought that may have been a little too much pressure. Remember, she’s a freshman. I asked her. If there’s pressure, I’ll have them repull. She said if I get in the finals I don’t care.”
So after the heavyweights finished, out come Tati and Griswold’s Seth Christie. Big crowd at Killingly. It was loud. It was intense. Non-stop action. Tati escaped with seven seconds left and got another point for Christie locking hands to force overtime. Christie won, 6-4.
“It was a little nervewracking waiting, but that’s it,” Irizarry said. “There were going to be a lot of people there anyways, because I was the first girl to make it to the finals.”
“Everybody thought she did great. She came off the mat and said, ‘I could have beaten him.’ I’m like I know you could have. She knows what she needs to do.”
At Class M, she lost, 5-2, to Cesar Rodriguez of Platt in the semifinals before bouncing back to defeat Peter Annis of Suffield-Windsor Locks, 2-0, for third place.
“She took a little revenge out,” Quibble said.
“I feel a lot of my toughness has to do with how my dad handled sports with me growing up. He’d keep me humble. He’d push me.”
Angel Irizarry didn’t wrestle, Tati said. He boxed.
“My dad kept on me all (Saturday) to keep going forward,” she said. “A lot of people did. I’m glad I was able to fight back, but I feel like if I had wrestled a little differently, I wouldn’t have had to fight back. I think I could have done a little better.”
Irizarry, who lives in Montville and is a vo-ag student at Ledyard, said she doesn’t eat much junk food anyway. The day of the meet she won’t eat before the weigh-in. Last week, she weighed 105. Some special things led her to 107 after practice Tuesday, but remember a two-pound weight allowance is added during the season and another pound is allowed the second day of a tournament.
“My (15th) birthday was Monday and I ate a lot of food,” she said. Birthday cake? “Cupcakes, vanilla with strawberries, really good,” she said. “On Saturday night after states, my dad got me a big ice cream cake. He brought it to my cousin’s house. I ate it.”
Irizarry said she weighed 116 in the seventh grade. She was 112 before the start of this season. At 5-4, she said she feels she has a good chance at remaining at 106, no heavier than 113. Her older brother Jeremiah, a senior who took fifth in the ECC for East Lyme-Norwich Tech, wrestled at 127.
“She may stay at 106 a while,” Quibble said. “That could be good for her. More maturity. More technique. She’s going to be a fighting force.”
As intense a competitor as she is, the pins and takedowns aren’t what she loves most about wrestling.
“It has to do with the people,” she said. “I’ll see people I remember wrestling at youth tournaments. Now I see them in high school and talk to them. See how they’re doing.
“When you’re good. it is nice to get recognition. People you’ve never met tell you you are doing well.”
Do the guys respect you?
“I think they do,” she said. “Even kids I beat, I can still talk to them and be friends.”
And there’s no avoiding her laugh. A few weeks ago, she told the Day of New London for a video piece she likes to beat up on people. Realizing how that sounded, she said, “I have a weird sense of humor.”
On this day, she insisted on posing for a photo next to a caricature of her coaches.
Tati sees the steam coming out of Quibble’s ears.
She laughs.