Coulter claims state championship

By ROB HAMILTON -

Card­ing­ton senior Maken­zie Coul­ter claimed a state cham­pi­onship at the U.S. Girls Wrestling Association’s Ohio Girls State Wrestling Tour­na­ment on Saturday.

Coul­ter com­peted in the 115-pound weight class and won all three of her matches by pin — two in the sec­ond period and one in the first — to claim the title.

“It’s the first tour­na­ment I wres­tled in that was strictly all girls,” she said. “I’d heard a cou­ple things about girls hav­ing nation­als and about a month-and-a-half ago, coach (John Hin­ton) told me about it and as soon as I had the paper in my hand, I filled it out because I knew that was what I wanted to do.”

She added that being in a wrestling fam­ily was a big help for her in improv­ing as a wrestler. Her older broth­ers James and Josh were both state plac­ers for Card­ing­ton dur­ing their high school careers.

“My old­est brother, James, helped me last week­end and is going up this week­end with me,” she said, while not­ing that Josh was a senior while she was a fresh­man, so she was able to work with him dur­ing practice.

Coul­ter will also com­pete at the USGWA National Cham­pi­onships at East­ern Michi­gan Uni­ver­sity in Ypsi­lanti, Mich. this week­end — a chal­lenge she is look­ing for­ward to.

“I know it will be more dif­fi­cult — it will be more com­pet­i­tive and there will be more peo­ple there,” she said. “I’ll just try my hard­est and hope for the best.”

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Mar 13 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.