Female wrestling is one of the fastest growing sports in high school and college, and Anna and Grace Pontzious take action while they hit the mats as members on the varsity wrestling team. The Pontzious sisters’ interest in wrestling began in 7th grade after participating in martial arts and Jiu Jitsu in their spare time.
“We really joined it not knowing if this is something we would like,” G. Pontzious said. “We love the environment and the challenges wrestling gives us. As any athlete does, we have our bad days and we feel frustrated, we just kept showing up to practice and it just grew overtime.”
At first, G. Pontzious joined. Then, the day before the sign-up slip was due, A. Pontzious decided to join.
“At the last second I decided I wanted to do it, too,” A. Pontzious said. “I absolutely love this sport. It made me mentally tougher and helped me as an athlete. If I can do this, then I am able to overcome any challenge.”
The Pontzious’ weren’t nervous about joining wrestling and being the only girls on the team because they knew they had each other. They were only concerned about getting to know everyone else.
“It’s definitely different with them on our team,” junior Owen Weingartz said. “But, they’ve been with us for a couple years and it’s always good to change it around because not many teams have girl wrestlers. So I think it’s very good to have them on our team.”
Wrestling was mainly considered “a boy’s sport.” However, in today’s society gender roles are flexing just like the muscles wrestlers use to take down their opponents and girls are quick to join the ranks.
“They’re a part of the team, Female wrestling is probably one of the fastest growing sports in the United States,” Coach David Drath said.
Drath plays a large role in the girls’ success, they said.
“We have an amazing coach who is always in our corner helping us out,” G. Pontzious said. “We are so lucky to have Coach Drath.”
Since there aren’t always other female opponents, they wrestle against both boys and girls who are in their weight class during meets. However, wrestling the guys requires a different strategy.
“There’s definitely a difference. We’ll never be as strong as the boys,” A. Pontzious said. “They are way more athletic, but I like to think it helped me and Grace become better athletes mentally.”
However, when the Pontzious’ have the opportunity to compete against other girls, they are able to go all in with their skill sets.
“At the girls’ tournament we really got to use the skills we have been practicing and the light bulb just kind of went off,” G. Pontzious said. “It’s a lot of fun to wrestle in them and it’s cool to see womens wrestling progress to the point where we can have our own tournaments on the weekends.”
Even though the sport can get mentally and physically draining, the Pontzious sisters don’t plan to throw in the towel on the sport anytime soon and hope to be able to get the opportunity to play in college.
“It is a very mentally challenging and physically challenging sport,” G. Pontzious said. “Some days it’s so rough, but at the end of the day, we love it so much. We wouldn’t want it any other way.”