Plant City debuted a new high school girls wrestling team this year. Despite its modest size of just two determined athletes, juniors Yadira Rivas and Isabelle Broeders, the team defied expectations and has the awards to prove it.
Leading the charge for this fledgling team is Rivas, whose prowess on the mat in the district and regional meets earned her a spot in the individual State Championship at Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee this weekend.
“My season is not over yet and I’ll keep fighting,” said Rivas, who joined the team after seeing posters about the team and talking to Coach Olson, the wrestling coach. “It was a pretty good outcome as a first-year wrestler.”
Even though she had been involved in sports since middle school, including soccer, volleyball, flag football and basketball, from her first wrestling practice, she knew it was a different sport. “I started noticing I would get easily bruised, it doesn’t happen now but people would look at my bruises and they thought I was being abused,” she said.
As she spent countless hours practicing proper technique and moves that would allow her to pin her opponent, and her body sore and tired, one quote kept running through her mind: “Pain is just weakness leaving the body.”
“I feel like a big part of wrestling is your mindset, your technique, how fast and quick you are, and then putting it all together and stepping on the mat with confidence,” she said. “You also have to know you’re going to give it all you have even if your opponent is better than you.”
From her first match, on Dec. 2 against Newsome High School, she’s been hooked on the sport, and the adrenaline that courses through her body when she steps on the mat.
“I beat my first opponent in the right period by pinning her,” she said. “I stepped on the mat and told myself that I have to go out there and win and at that moment I couldn’t hear anything, everything became quiet and it was just me and my opponent,” she said.
Rivas, who wrestles in the 155 pound weight class, was touched when her father drove up from Miami to watch her first meet. “He was crying tears of joy but then he told me that I haven’t experience it all, that when I lose that’s when I’ll win,” she said.
Her father’s words rang true several meets later when, with a 7 to 0 record, she lost to a wrestler from Robinson High School. “She was an amazing wrestler and I realized I lost to somebody great but she gave me insight to how to become better,” she said.
Broeders, who wrestles in the 170 pound weight class and also plays varsity and club soccer, said wrestling has made her a better soccer player.
“Wrestling is hard on the body but also the mind because you have to be mentally fit to wrestle, it really tests how far you’re willing to go,” she said.
Broeders made it her mission to mimic Rivas in practices and in the weightlifting room. Before the season started, she weighed 182 pounds but is now a lean 162 pounds.
She also won her first match. “I was nervous but confident, she shot on me, I sprawled and then she got on top of me but in the end I pinned her in the first period,” said Broeders.
She ended winning third place that day and ultimately made it to districts and regionals but lost in regionals, disqualifying her for state. “Next year I’ll make it for sure,” she said.
Both wrestlers are hoping more girls try out for the team next year to join the brotherhood (now sisterhood) of wrestlers.