Junior year was the hardest year of my life. I have never had a fight as hard as this one.

On the bright
side, the only thing that kept me sane and alive was joining the wrestling team. I used to play volleyball
since 7th grade, where I somehow made it into the junior high school volleyball team, and it wasn’t bad,
but I didn’t feel at home with the girls, but I didn’t really know what it was like to fit in with those
people. Then, in August, we got a new head coach, who didn’t know me, and I didn’t know her. I was
never a bad player, but I wasn’t the best because I didn’t know how to communicate and work on a
team. I was very good by myself, but I often got intimidated by the girls, this is a silly reason, because
they were really tall 😊. I made it in my sophomore year, but this year, I didn’t even
make callbacks.
And at the moment, I was actually relieved, because I didn’t actually want to play
anymore. I realized that even though I had worked so hard to be better, I started
weightlifting, cardio, powerlifting, and I got very strong, but I didn’t know how to
work on a team. I didn’t know how to communicate, and it didn’t help that I was
also a very quiet, shy girl. Still am😊. Anyways, when I didn’t make it in, it wasn’t as
crushing as I thought it would be. Somehow, I knew that it would be okay, and that
volleyball wasn’t the sport for me, if anything, it was just for fun. Many people told
me that God works in mysterious ways, many relatives told me stories of people
they knew who changed sports and did better than before. I didn’t know why
everyone was so worried about me, but I guess they cared about me.
Then, in my calculus class, my teacher introduced a new girl to the class. She was a
foreign exchange student, and I got the impression to go talk to her. It took me like
three or four class periods to talk to her, but I finally did, and I realized that she was
a really nice girl. She was very quiet and reserved, but I realized that she could be a
really good friend. Then as we got closer as friends, she talked to me about a really
cute guy who did wrestling, and how she was planning to join the wrestling team.
She told me that they were holding practices before season on Mondays and
Wednesdays and invited me to go with her.
The first time I went there, they said they would be doing a fundraiser to raise
money for wrestling season, and the payments for it. It was my first time, and a
couple hours later, I had more than 600 pounds of potatoes to sell. At this point, I
didn’t want to change my label from “the volleyball girl” to “that one crazy girl who
like to do wrestling”. I didn't want people to think that I was weird, so I put it off for
a bit. I still came to practices, I really liked it, but I was scared of getting hurt in a
match. I had seen people bleeding in practices, and sometimes needing to sit out
because they were hurt, and as insane as this sounds, I didn’t look forward to that.
Then I met this freshman girl, who could kick my butt every time we wrestled. Who
had only wrestled one year prior to this, and was lighter than me by 30 pounds. To
be fair, I could at least make some of the girls struggle because the weightlifting
had paid off, and I wasn’t about to give up, I was too stubborn and prideful to allow
that to happen😊. Her, I could never move. Her name was Kristina, and it wasn’t
until later that I found out her dad was a coach and her brother wrestled with her,
so it explained why she was so good. I liked so much how she would willingly show
people how good she was, and while she didn’t brag about it, she had more bite
than bark. She could beat all the girls on the team, even girls who were bigger than
me by 30 pounds. She was the reason I chose to keep wrestling and be more vocal
about wrestling.
Then wrestling season started in November. I got paired with a girl who had
wrestled last year, and she was the nicest partner I could have asked for. She was
130 pounds, just like me, so it was a perfect fit. I trained with her for about two
weeks, and then it was time for the first duel of the season, or game. I was really
nervous about this, but as I was walking out the door, my mom tested positive for
covid. In the first game, my partner broke her ankle. During this time, Wynter
Formal happened, the winter dance, and at this time, the wrestling girls and I had
made plans to go as a group with some of the wrestling boys to the dance together.
At this time, I had a boyfriend who I was going to go to the dance with, but then I
got covid, so I couldn’t go🙁.
When I came back, I had lost around 7 pounds, in two weeks, I was also really weak,
because post-covid syndrome hadn’t worn off yet. Two days later, I had my first
wrestling match. I was completely terrified the first time I walked into that mat. I
didn’t really know what I was doing, I only knew how to not get pinned. I had lost
more than three weeks worth of practice, and therefore the knowledge, so I just
remembered the basic moves. Surprisingly, I got pinned my first match, but my
second match, on that same day, I did win. I still don’t know how, but I did. Then,
because my partner had her ankle broken in her first match, she couldn’t practice
with me anymore. So, as a 123 girl, I had to wrestle with a 145-pound, second year
wrestler, who did not like me. I still don’t know why, since I’m completely lovable
but I digress, since it was her problem.
Wrestling with her made me have a lot of frustrating days, where I didn’t think I was
improving. Then, one day in practice, she hurt my shoulder. Okay, technically, it
wasn’t all her. She was trying to run a move that would twist your shoulder a bit,
and armbar, and I refused to give her the satisfaction of pinning me, which later I
realized wouldn’t actually pin me, but I didn’t know this then, so I fought her with
everything I had, until my shoulder popped ^_^. Well, this took me out of practice
for another two weeks, where she said crappy stuff about me behind my back. All
the girls, thanks to her, thought I was faking the injury, and told me to suck it up,
take ibuprofen and wrestle matches. I wasn’t. I knew my body needed time to heal,
so for two weeks, I had to handle telling people that I couldn’t wrestle, only to have
them try to convince me to wrestle, hurt my shoulder further, and take longer time
to heal.
The first time I had to wrestle after my injury, I was terrified of hurting myself
further, since during those practices, my partner had been hurting my shoulder still,
without taking notice of the injury. I was 100 percent fine with losing that match. I
told myself that if my shoulder started hurting, I would stop fighting and allow her to
pin me. But I won that match. I pinned her. I was so happy that day. This might
have made people think I had been faking the injury, but I didn’t think about it then.
After that, everything changed. My partner was still mean to me, but I drastically
improved, and after a couple of weeks, I was the one working moves and she would
just try for me to not pin her. I think that’s why she stopped being rude to me.
Then it was time for divisionals. This is the tournament to decide to will go wrestle
at state level. Backstory, the week prior to this, we had a tournament where I had
only wrestled twice, and lost both matches, so not a great day for me. I was able to
win four important matches in divisionals, and lost three. I placed 7 th in divisionals,
not high enough to get a medal, but enough to allow me to advance to state finals.
It was two weeks away. Then again, Kristina asked me if I wanted to stay longer to
work on “extras” which really she meant working on anything we wanted and
spending more time with it. Her and Coach Kent, her dad, taught me so much
during those two weeks.
Then it was time for State. I was feeling pretty numb, expecting to lose with the first
day, but I won all three matches I had that day. But it didn’t go so good for some of
my friends. All nine girl wrestlers qualified for state and 15 of our boy wrestlers
qualified as well, but at the end of the day, only me and Kristina, and 6 other boys
got through the first day. On the second day, I had the possibility to win a medal,
my first ever medal. I had three matches that day, and I won the first two, but I lost
the third one, which gave me fourth place at state level.
I placed fourth in state in my first year of wrestling. I kid you not, it felt like playing
poker with Uno cards. I have said this many times, and I’m not trying to be modest,
but I felt like many other girls deserved it a lot more than I did. Sure, I had worked
hard for it, but there were girls who had been wrestling for six years, and hadn’t
gotten through the first day. I felt bad for them, but they couldn’t feel happy for me.
And it’s okay, you win some, you lose some. This brings us to today. A week after
state, we began recruiting new freshmen girls and started training them, showing
them all the basic moves, and honestly, I think they are gonna be great friends
during season.
This was my chance to go through the basics , something I didn’t have the
opportunity to learn pre-season, because everyone was at very different levels of
learning, some had wrestled for ten years, and some had wrestled for a month, and
then there was me. I didn’t go into great detail into all the struggles I went through
this year, because if I had to sum up my whole junior year, I would say it was the
year I became a wrestler. A lot of things happened, I asked out a gorgeous guy out,
broke up with my boyfriend, escaped an abusive relationship, and got a 4 on the AP
calculus test. But none of those things come close to the importance that wrestling
has in my life, or the influence.
I know I was born to change the world of wrestling, to coach it, and to help other
children become the most absolute best version of themselves as they can. I know
that I will be a very succesful person later in life.