After months of intense conditioning, weight-training and drilling, the Lady Spartans finally went up for another match. The Lady Spartans Wrestling Team placed first after competing against Bartlett High School and Cordova High School and received the title of Division One High School Girls Wrestling Champions. The White Station High School wrestling team started preparing for the season months in advance giving them time to correct their techniques and build their skill level. After working and training hard, many felt their effort was worth it with their major win.
However, even though these girls have a dominating win streak, anxiety can get the best of anyone before a match.
“I’m always nervous whenever my bout number is getting called,” Alshujaa said. “I use that nervousness to push me through the match, and I turn that nervousness into adrenaline.”
As the girls aspire to continuously improve, they self-reflect on their performance after each match. In later matches, they use the feedback their teammates and coaches give them from prior ones to help them win more tournaments. Kayleigh Angona (10) has won thirteen matches so far in the season.
“There’s always something I can do better,” Angona said. “Coach is always telling me how I can improve.”
The team’s technique continues to get closer to perfection each practice after fixing mistakes made during previous matches.
“We keep on practicing the same stuff every day so we can keep getting better,” Angona said.
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The title of champions reflects the girls’ hard work, determination and commitment on the mat. After many triumphs, the Lady Spartans have changed the course of girls’ wrestling for Memphis Shelby County Schools and feel proud to have such a prestigious award.
“[The title] feels really great. It feels like we made history because this really hasn’t happened before,” Shorter said.
Since wrestling is a male-dominated sport and has only recently been opened up to females, it has different expectations and can lead to discrimination because some people perceive the girls as “manly”. Through their continuous triumphs, many of the team members hope to inspire other girls to step up and try a sport they never would have thought of playing before.
“A lot of women’s sports teams aren’t really like recognized that much. I feel like that win really helped us get recognized,” Shorter said. “And I hope that like more people will look into White Station sports and see that the other women’s teams are really good as well.”
After defeating girls from other schools with multiple years of experience, Jaliyaa Dogan (10) realized how much she underestimated herself on the mat.
“I was taken aback because like this is all of our first year wrestling and it was like ‘Wow, we did all this in one year,’” Dogan said.
Dogan hopes that this victory will continue to motivate the team to earn more titles and make it further in tournaments to keep their title as champions.
“[This win is] going to make us try and get another championship,” Dogan said. “Maybe regionals or even state if we can.”
