As seen on Wreaper Wrestling.
The 2019- 2020 season started out as a weird season for me, little did I know that it would end just as bizarre. In my 2018- 2019 season I only wrestled at the NAIA national championships for the Oklahoma City Stars. I had knee surgery in November of 2019 immediately following the U23 World Championships. The idea was that I would be able to compete in the majority of the post-season for OCU. Sadly, my surgery was much more intense than we thought. I had to have part of my kneecap removed and replaced with calcium. This pushed back my recovery and I ended up missing every tournament that year except for the NAIA National Championships. I fell short that tournament and I was hungry to return to Jamestown in 2020. I continued to compete on the senior level that spring, but to my dismay I wasn’t wrestling at the level I wanted to. After a rough couple of months, I decided to take the summer off from wrestling completely. I hadn’t done this since junior high, but my mind and my body needed it.
When the 2019 season started, I was honestly a little scared. I was beginning my senior season with a brand-new coach and I hadn’t wrestled for months. I even remember calling miss y fiancé and asking him, “Do you think I remember how to wrestle? What if I forgot everything?”. He assured me with a chuckle that I would be fine. I was legitimately so scared to get back out on the mat.
My senior season started out great. My knee was feeling much better and I was getting my weight management under control. I felt unstoppable. We went to the Missouri Valley Open tournament and I remember having the same fears I did at the start of the season. I just had to wrestle past them. I knew I was back, but this is when the chaos of this season started. My finals match was over about 9:30 p.m. and we learned that our bus didn’t have power steering. We thought we were going to be stranded in Marshall, Missouri, but luckily, Wayland Baptist was nice enough to give our entire team a ride back to Oklahoma City.
After this tournament I felt on top of the world. I was happy with how I was feeling and how I was wrestling, but that soon changed. I started to get really weak. I remember doing sprints at practice and feeling dizzy with a new level of exhaustion. This had never really happened to me. I didn’t feel sick, I just felt dead all the time. I was assured that it was just a respiratory infection and I would be good to go shortly. I took it easy at a couple practices to try to feel as prepared as I could for the U.S. Open. That tournament was like running headfirst into a brick wall. My matches felt like an out of body experience. To this day I still don’t really remember what happened in any of them. I just remember lying in the practice area after every match not being about to catch my breath. It broke my heart that I couldn’t wrestle the way I did at Missouri Valley a month earlier. I was disappointed in myself and thoroughly confused. This was my chance to qualify for the Olympic Trials. I started to put a bunch of pressure on myself. I would think, “What if I don’t qualify for the Olympic Trials this year? I qualified as an 18 year old, why can’t I qualify now?”.
The U.S. Open was our last tournament before Christmas break. I took a short break during that time to try to get healthy. We began practicing again before National Duals. We had some killer workouts leading up to this tournament and I specifically remember feeling even weaker than I did at the U.S. Open. I remember lying on the floor of the gym after practice and my best friend telling me that I looked green. Why was this happening? I did everything I could to be healthy again. After this workout I didn’t stop shaking for hours it took me forever to recover. I knew that something was seriously wrong. After, a stern talk with my parents I finally made an appointment with a doctor. I went in and did a blood test. The day before my team departed for National Duals, I found out that I had mono. I was stunned. I mean it made sense, but my heart was crushed again. This was my last chance to wrestle at National Duals with my team and I was heartbroken that I couldn’t compete.
Over the next month, I took the required time off. It was difficult to come to practice every day and not be able to do what I loved, but eventually I was cleared to compete again. I wrestled for my first time back from mono at my senior night. I still felt pretty terrible during my match, but I was able to push through it. After that night every match felt better. I got stronger every time I went out on the mat.
Weeks later it was time for the WCWA National Championships. I wasn’t able to compete at this tournament the year before and my sophomore year I took a devastating loss in the semi-finals. I was pumped for this tournament. It was finally my chance to win a national title and I was feeling stronger than I had in months. I had a confidence going into that tournament that I never had before. The 2020 WCWA National Championships will forever be an amazing memory for me. I was finally able to accomplish something I had wanted to do since I set foot in the Oklahoma City University wrestling room in 2016. The cherry on top of it all was being able to have my dad sit in my corner for my finals match. The last time he was able to do that was my last high school match in the Fargo finals. I still grin from ear to ear when I think about that tournament.
After the WCWA National Championships, my team had to cancel a couple of duals because the majority of the team now had mono. We are still unsure if I was “Patient Zero”. This was a rough time. There were days that only five girls were cleared to wrestle at a time. This took a toll on all of us. We had an obstacle that we had to overcome that no one could have ever planned for.
Two weeks before the NAIA National Championships we had the first-ever Sooner Athletic Conference Tournament. To me, this tournament will also always be a highlight of my wrestling career. This tournament helped me remember why I started wrestling in the first place. To start the tournament, I warmed up by playing football with my teammates. I felt like a kid in a candy store that day. I was having so much goofing around with my teammates and doing what we love. Wrestling. I enjoyed everything about that day. At the end of the tournament, I received an award that I will cherish forever, the ‘Champion of Character’. I can’t begin to tell you how much that meant to me. I have always wanted to be a good wrestler, but what is much more important to me is being a good person. I had to hold back tears when my name was announced. To cap off this great day, my team went to Chilis and I was able to spend the evening with my mom, coaches and team… and finish it off with a sirloin. I couldn’t have planned it better if I tried.
Finally, it was time for the last tournament of my college career. The tournament I had been thinking about all season, the NAIA National Tournament. I was determined to finish this season off the way I knew I could. I was confident and stronger mentally and physically than I had been all season. I was ready. We traveled to Jamestown, North Dakota and everything was going according to plan until Thursday afternoon. The day before the NAIA National Championships, we learned that our tournament was cancelled. Our season was over.
This was tough news to process and to be honest I am not sure it sunk in until a few days later. Once the news broke, all of our lives were turned upside down. We had to immediately fly to Oklahoma City, our classes were moved online, we all had to move, and we still had to process that our wrestling season was cut short. When I think about it now, I still struggle to comprehend that my college wrestling career is over. In my mind, I will still be doing pre-season workouts in the Oklahoma sun and wishing I did more conditioning over the summer when I am winded in live goes. I don’t know when all of it will hit me, but I hope that I will have the same mindset I do now. I am disappointed that the NAIA National Tournament got cancelled, but I have to keep reminding myself of what I did do this season. I was able to accomplish a goal I have had since I was a freshman, qualify for Olympic Trials and have an amazing SAC conference tournament. As I am writing this, I am smiling thinking about those memories. I am choosing to focus on those amazing moments in my career.
There were a lot of things that happened to me this season and over my college career that were completely out of my control, but if I had let them get to me I wouldn’t be able to have the wonderful moments I had in my career and this season. I am going to treat this unexpected experience exactly the same. I am looking forward to Olympic Trials, coaching girls through similar experiences and continuing to grow as a wrestler and a person.