With more and more girls every year wanting to participate in high school wrestling nationwide, many school districts are starting to make girls wrestling teams, where instead of fighting the boys they can now go against the best their gender has to offer.
One of these schools that has decided to add a wrestling team for the girls is Rocky Point High School and they may be one of the teams to beat on Long Island this winter.
This past Thursday, the Rocky Point Eagles Girls Wrestling Team took the mat against Bay Shore in their season opener where they beat Bay Shore, 42-18, at Bay Shore High School.
All 10 matches ended in pins and all the female wrestlers seem to be excited for the opportunity to have all-girls meets in the future.
Early on in the meet, we got to see what kind of shape the top dog in Section XI Girls Wrestling was in as Julianna Hernandez took the mat in one of the most highly anticipated matches of the day.
Hernandez, who became the first girl to win a league wrestling title in Long Island history last year when she won the 110-pound title at the boys Suffolk League III wrestling tournament, faced Mora Peterson, who placed fourth in the boys Suffolk League VI championship last winter in the match of the day.
The Rocky Point star seemed to be in peak form as she pinned Peterson 35 seconds into her match which set the tone for the rest of the day.
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| Madison Hernandez Looking to Secure a Pin vs Bay Shore File Photo |
Rocky Point would have a lot of success in this meet by using single leg takedowns to get the Bay Shore wrestlers down to the mat, resulting in it being easier for the Eagles to get pins and score points.
Many of the girls on the Rocky Point team were extremely happy with not just their performances this past week but how the sport has advanced and grown over the last year or so.
“It shows how much the sport is growing. We didn’t have this at all last year. We had maybe three girls tournaments plus states,” Rocky Point wrestler Ava Capogna said to Newsday. “This year we have dual meets, more tournaments, and it’s just getting bigger and bigger as the sport’s growing.”
Capogna was one of the stars of the meet as she had a pin in her match – the sixth one of the day – which helped her walk off the mat with a victory and spark a rally of three consecutive matches with pins by Rocky Point Wrestlers to end the meet.
The Capogna pin would then spark a string of three consecutive pins by her which led to teammates Alexandra Viera and Madison Hernandez following up in their matches.
Outside of the success from Hernandez and Capogna in their matches, the other Hernandez on the team, Madison Hernandez, joined in on the fun and had two pins of her own. Viera pinned their opponents, and Delilah Skurnik and Clover Vander Velvin secured pins for Rocky Point.