By DEB BENTLY
Staff Writer
Annabelle Petsinger remembers the moment vividly: “We were at the team sections,” she recalls. “And this guy yelled out, ‘Girls can’t wrestle.’ But there I was, shoving my opponent’s face into the mat.”
Petsinger, who won this year’s girls’ state wrestling championship in the 120-pound weight class, finished the 2022-23 regular wrestling season with an overall record of 22-13; her record against girls only was 14-1.
Just like this past season, her 13-year career has consisted mostly of wrestling males. However, things seem to be changing. The number of girls wrestling in the state has more than doubled in the past year, from about 250 to 540. Last year, 2022, saw the first-ever girls’ state wrestling tournament. This year saw expanded girls’ section competitions and, of course, the second state tournament.
Petsinger is happy these changes occurred, but they aren’t the reason she is passionate about her sport.
“I’ve grown up doing it,” she says. “I can’t picture myself not wrestling.” Petsinger’s days, in fact, revolve around the sport for much of the year; when it’s not the high school winter season, she joins clubs which focus on greco or freestyle through the summer, even when it means something of a drive.
For the spring though, much of her time will be spent at cross country and track practices. As she has in the past, she expects to run 5K with the one and 3,200 meters (2 miles) for the other, while also taking part in the high jump.
It shouldn’t take much for her to be up to speed, since running has been her go-to technique for dropping pounds during the wrestling season. Having discovered the day before the state tournament that she was 2 pounds overweight, she ran 6 miles on a treadmill.
With the need to watch her weight so closely ended for the time being, she admits, “I’m grateful I can eat, but I’m looking for some other practices.”
It seems nearly everything about this high school junior speaks of her determination, yet most people only know a tiny part of the story.
Wrestling and practicing began for her at the age of 4. Signed up for many different wrestling clubs and activities since before her schooling began, she has historically been the only girl. She tells how, for elementary wrestlers, their first exciting entry into competition are the “exhibition” matches held prior to and during high school tournaments. Most grapplers get to step out onto the mat for the first time during their sixth-grade year, but because there were no other females and the boys her age were unwilling to face off against a girl, “I never got an exhibition match,” Petsinger remembers.
But that disappointment and an array of others that followed were taken in stride. “There wouldn’t be a locker room for me,” she remembers of many tournaments. “I had nowhere to change clothes, and nowhere to shower.” The solution was simple though. “All through elementary wrestling, that’s just how it was,” she says. “Our parents would bring us to practice dressed in our singlets, and we would wear them until we got home.”
Another persistent circumstance was that, because wrestlers used to “weigh in” in their underwear, she would have to do so separately, and pretty much always last. One complication with this is that grapplers frequently go to great levels of abstinence to “make weight,” and thus are very hungry, very thirsty, or both, until after weighing in, and then can finally eat and drink. Perhaps thanks to the growing number of girls in the sport, wrestlers now weigh in wearing their uniforms.
A certain percentage of her opponents would forfeit their matches against her rather than wrestle against a girl. Others, Annabelle remembers, would come to the mat expecting an easy win. Though there were nearly always people in the audience wondering what she was doing there, Annabelle says, that didn’t bother her during her matches.
“You just go out there and wrestle,” she says matter-of-factly. “You’re too busy working to worry.”
She expresses gratitude, however, to NRHEG’s head coach, Shawn Larson, and to Augsburg girls’ wrestling coach, Chad Shilson, both of whom advocated for, and eventually made the girls’ state tournament happen; Shilson had been proposing the possibility to the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) for nearly a decade before it became reality.
“I remember him saying, ‘They rejected our proposal this year, but next year’s is already started,’” she recalls.
Of Shilson’s efforts, and of her own career, Petsinger observes, “Sure, there were hardships. You just had to find a way around them.
“You have to stick with something if you want to come out on top.”
Of her state championship win, Petsinger says she was too busy wrestling to experience much anxiety during the match. Afterwards she remembers a flurry of people greeting and congratulating her. But perhaps the greeting she remembers most came from one of her uncles, all of whom have been wrestlers.
“You need to do it again next year,” she was told.