The girls wrestling season started on Monday, Nov. 18, but for junior Finley Rose her wrestling season started after state last year. Rose has been working during the offseason to get stronger for her junior season.
“Wrestling is mainly a mental thing, and when you do it over the summer without taking that break during the winter, you’re kind of always in that mindset,” Rose said. “So I’ve just been ready for this season since I started summer wrestling.”
Similarly, senior and co-captain Raina Frantz spent her summer working on her wrestling moves and staying in shape for the upcoming season.
“I just tried to put myself in a bunch of different wrestling rooms and do as much off season work as I could, and do a lot of open mat time and on mat time so that I could get more experience,” Frantz said.
Attending camps and tournaments over the summer, as well as working out consistently, can serve as a useful tool for wrestlers to keep up with their skills during the off season. The team hosted a camp for wrestlers over the summer which was a new opportunity for more girls to improve their skills before the season started.
This is only the fourth year that the school has had a girls wrestling team and each year the team has grown both in size and ability. Sophomore Chris Hale expressed that the team is focusing on getting more confident and expanding on previous successes.
“We want to work more on our vision as a team together,” Hale said. “We want to be more confident as a team. We want to work together more, just kind of do what we did last year, but better.”
During the season the team practices every single day and plans to attend 13 tournaments. This rigorous schedule can be grueling, but Frantz believes that the toughness of the sport actually appeals to girls.
“Wrestling is really, really hard, so the fact that [girls] can prove themselves and do the sport is empowering,” Frantz said.
Rose echoed Frantz’s sentiment, saying that proving others wrong plays a huge role in promoting the sport.
“I think that there’s been a large increase in women who wrestle in high school because it’s kind of a switch on gender roles. And I’ve been told multiple times I don’t think girls should wrestle, [or they] think it’s disgusting,” Rose said. “I think a lot of girls do it to prove to boys that girls can do a tough sport that most men can’t even do.”
Girls wrestling is the fastest growing high school sport right now, so it’s no surprise the school’s program has seen a huge increase in participation. This being Rose’s third year on the team, she has seen major changes in the program.
“Watching the program grow, there’s definitely a lot more competitions and meets we can go to now,” Rose said. “You get to meet a lot of new people doing wrestling, because you’re all in the same boat of doing a new sport. I think just seeing the program grow by having new coaches and the boys team helping us a little bit, it’s been really good for our program.”
One thing that invites lots of students to join is the friendships that wrestling helps facilitate. Hale believes that the team’s close bond is one thing that appeals to girls wanting to join.
“The most appealing part of wrestling is the team atmosphere,” Hale said. “Wrestling itself is really fun, but having those teammates that are also your best friends is probably one of the best parts of it.”
While opportunities for female wrestlers have grown, the team is still relatively new. Head coach Aaron Kennedy emphasized, over email, that keeping up with wrestling skills is crucial for the school’s girls wrestling team.
“Many of our girl wrestlers didn’t start wrestling until high school,” Kennedy said. “The good thing about that is that they don’t have bad habits to break, but they do need to work harder at learning techniques and improving their strength to compete with their more experienced opponents.”
(By Eva Hernandez)
To work on their skills, the team does team conditioning on Tuesdays and open mat on Thursdays. During open mat wrestlers have the opportunity to get help with specific skills. Opportunities during the preseason are great for wrestlers who want to improve before the season officially starts.
Rose has seen her hard work during the preseason and offseason pay off each year as she continues to get better, especially during the state tournament.
“I’m really looking forward to state this season, because I feel like each year I improve at state and what I do with state,” Rose said. “This year, I’m really focusing towards how I perform at state, and not all the other meets.”
