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‘Fight like a girl’ takes on new meaning
McCOOK, Neb — Eight McCook High School girls made school history this year, as the first girl wrestling team.
“Someday, they’ll be able to tell their kids or grandkids, I was the first,” McCook High School boys and girls wrestling coach Nick Umsheid told the McCook School Board Monday night. He and the eight girls attended the board meeting Monday night, along with girls wrestling coach, Clint Hosick.
Members of the first MHS girls wrestling team are Makayla Pate, Gwyneth Davis, Paige Witt, Bella Gonzales, Izzy Campos, Jennika Spencer, Kendra Rogers and Noleigh Stephens.
High School girls wrestling, sanctioned for the first time this year by the Nebraska State Athletic Association, is exploding across the state and surprising everyone, including Umsheid.
They started out with 13 girls and Umsheid said Monday night he thought the majority would drop out at Christmas and “we’d be happy at five or six.” Instead, he ended up with eight committed athletes.
Of those, one is the district champion this year, Gwyneth Davis, a senior, and another is the district runner-up, Makayla Pate, a sophomore. Both are headed to Omaha on Friday to compete at the first girls state wrestling meeting.
Prior to this year, Pate said she had never watched a wrestling meet before so “I had no clue what I was doing” when she first signed up. But she’s always been competitive and grew up doing a lot of farm work, Pate said, like wrestling 120 pound goats and drilling T-posts.
Davis said she was initially talked into signing up for the team by Makayla and thought it would be a good way to prepare for basic training in the military. Still, “I didn’t think it would be as intense as it was,” she said.
Umsheid told the school board that practices for the girls were just as strenuous as for the boys. “Nothing was modified in the conditionings,” he said.
Team member Kendra Rogers attested to that and told the school board that it was a lot harder than she expected, but “I learned a lot mentally and physically and I got more from this than I thought.”
Umsheid said there’s been interest at the junior high level in girls club wrestling and for more tournaments.
As for the state meet this weekend, coach Clint Hosick said it will be the largest meet the girls have competed in so far, so a few jitters are natural. Pate said she’s a little nervous after seeing some of the competitors she’s up against but that “I’ll just do the best I can.”
Davis has since been recruited by Hastings College for wrestling and dance and said she’ll take what she learned this year in wrestling into other areas of her life. “It gives you a confidence and helps you realize that you can do more than you think,” she said.