TRAILBLAZERS
Collierville boasts West Tennessee’s only high school girls wrestling team
As the preseason practice stretched on inside the wrestling room at Collierville High School, faces got redder, hair got messier, the smell of sweat grew more pungent and coach Mary Catherine Correia’s voice got louder as she reminded her team the season was about to start and they would soon be well acquainted with the breathless, tired state they found themselves in at 6:30 p.m. on Halloween.
Corinne S Kennedy
“Keep grinding, keep grinding. Remember, season starts next week,” she called out to the six pairs of wrestlers who had just wrapped up 60-second practice bouts. “It’s OK to feel exhausted. It’s not OK to give up because you feel exhausted.”
A few minutes later, Correia called practice to a close and gathered her team around her to tell them about their first meet, ask them to text her about clubs that might cause a conflict with practice and remind them that on Mondays and Wednesdays, they would have to practice with the boys.
“This is y’alls room too,” she said. “You put in as much work as the boys do.”
Correia coaches the Collierville High School girls wrestling team, the only full team at the high school level in West Tennessee. The program grew from two individual wrestlers last year to a team of 13 this season, and Correia, who won state in her weight class in 2010 as an individual wrestler from CHS and wrestled in college, hopes that in years to come, the program will grow into a powerhouse that will inspire more area schools to field teams.
“I always told myself if I moved back home, I’m going to start a team of just girls,” she said in an interview. “I finally moved home and did exactly what I said I was going to do.”
From individuals to a team
Hundreds of girls from across Tennessee have wrestled competitively since the sport was sanctioned by the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association in 2015, though unofficial competitions happened before then.
Last season, 389 girls from 89 Tennessee high schools wrestled and this year, 104 schools have declared they will have a least one female wrestler, but it is too early in the season to know exactly how many individuals will compete, TSSAA Assistant Executive Director Mark Reeves said.
To have a full team, a school needs at least one girl competing in each of the 11 weight classes, but it is unclear how many teams exist across the state because wrestlers do not register with TSSAA by weight class, Reeves said. Only a handful of girls teams have existed across the state, with the exact number fluctuating from season to season and potentially within a season.
While Montgomery County has become something of an incubator for dominant high school girls wrestling, strong competitors have come from all over Tennessee, including the Memphis area. Jayla Washington of Cordova High School placed third in the 215 weight class at the state competition in February.
Collierville has had individual girls wrestlers over the years, but previous efforts to form a full team were unsuccessful.
Last year, Collierville High School student Betsy Nations decided she wanted to give wrestling a try. She and a friend competed as individual wrestlers from CHS and trained with the boys team. If one of them missed practice, the other would wrestle the boys.
“At first the guys weren’t really that accepting, but as soon as we proved ourselves and that we were there to not play around they got used to us,” Nations said.
She had played team sports for years but loved the individual challenges wrestling brought, she said, from becoming more conscious about her nutrition and learning to self-motivate to the sheer physical strength the sport builds.
“When you win at wrestling, you know it was all because of you and all because of the work that you put into it,” she said. “You get to win for your team, but it’s also a very individual sport.”
Over the past year, Nations — now a sophomore — and her fellow female wrestler recruited other girls they thought might be interested, and were sought out by girls they didn’t know who had heard about their efforts to form a team.
Now, at the beginning of the team’s first season together, the girls are preparing for their first meet, a preseason tournament on Nov. 23. Their schedule currently features five regular-season tournaments in December and January in Tullahoma, Hendersonville, Thompson’s Station, Clarksville and Murfreesboro before the regional tournament in Nolensville and the state meet in Franklin in February.
“We’re here, we’re a team now and we’re not just going to back down because people think it’s unusual,” Nations said.
Her coach echoed her.
“They’re definitely a group of girls who are very confident with who they are, and they don’t want to be within the norm,” Correia said.
Collierville Schools Athletic Director Jeff Curtis said it took leadership and vision to build a new team and credited the team members, Correia and coaches for the boys wrestling team for working together to recruit wrestlers and get the team up and running.
‘My first goal is to impact their life’
Trailblazing does come with its own set of challenges, including finding funding to travel to far-flung meets in Middle and East Tennessee where there are other girls teams to compete against. Correia said she has found some outside sponsorship for the team, but she wants to save that money for the state meet in February. In the meantime, the team is looking for more funding sources to help get them to regularseason competitions.
Correia said she knew before the season started there would be girls at Collierville who were interested in wrestling and said the school was too big — it had about 2,800 enrolled students last year — not to have a team. However, because she doesn’t work at the school — Correia is a physical therapist assistant with Campbell Clinic — she wasn’t able to recruit girls directly.
“Honestly, I just prayed and I believed with my heart and soul. Only the people that are truly interested are going to come and keep coming back because this is a difficult sport,” she said. “It’s a grueling sport. You get out there and no matter how good of shape you are in you’re going to be exhausted and out of breath.”
As a predominantly individual sport, wrestling builds self-confidence and demands self-discipline, Correia said. The team practices five days a week, combining wrestling drills with cardio workouts and weight lifting, and has nutrition meetings weekly. The girls are responsible for carrying those lessons over into daily life and sticking to healthy eating habits all season long.
But she sees the team as more than just a group of girls who work out and compete together. The wrestling team provides a way for the girls to bond and Correia provides mentorship for the team members, both on and off the mats.
“My first goal as a coach is to create well-rounded, independent, confident women,” Correia said. “My first goal is to impact their life.”
After that, she hopes to coach the Dragons to a state championship and build the foundation for a West Tennessee wrestling dynasty.
Corinne Kennedy is a reporter for the Commercial Appeal. She can be reached via email at Corinne.kennedy@ Commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @Corinneskennedy