The time period from early February through most of March is by far the busiest timespan for the Astound TV Network in terms of our local high school sports productions.

If all goes well (and our local team keeps winning) we will do as many as 17 productions in any five-day period and will sometimes work six days a week (plus Sundays if there’s bad weather and we get “backed up” on playoff games).  This does not include any Lafayette or any other events or happenings that we may be working on.

Fortunately to help us out during this hectic time of year, we have been able to add an additional new voice to our high school basketball broadcasts.

Dieruff Varsity Basketball Head Coach Marlon Randall is joining us for select broadcasts this month and sharing his insights on local basketball and the current postseason action.

Before coaching in Allentown, he was a head coach at Pottsville HS and an assistant coach on the Reading boys basketball staff that won a state championship in 2017.  Since he has prepared for, studied “film” on and has coached against many of these same teams during the past season, he gives a unique perspective on our local teams during the biggest games of the year.

I’m sure he would rather be spending his “March” coaching his beloved Huskies basketball team in the district and state playoffs right now rather than sitting alongside yours truly, but he’s done a great job with his first few games last week and we are very lucky to have his expertise and commentary as part of our new listing of ATVN announcers this winter.

Also, to help us with our postseason coverage of District XI and PIAA state wrestling, we are pleased to welcome Adriana Dias to join our announcing team.

Adriana made history this winter by being part of the first ever women’s wrestling team at Cedar Crest College.  With her first broadcast on the ATVN, she also became the first woman to announce a high school wrestling match in the Lehigh Valley.

Please join me in welcoming Marlon and Adriana to the Astound TV Network sports family!

PROGRAMMING NOTE:

Join us this Thursday at 7pm for “ATVN SportsTalk” as our own color basketball analyst Megan Kane will be our special guest previewing this weekend’s District XI basketball championship games.

Also, check out our broadcast schedule here on our website for all of our coverage of the Lehigh Valley title basketball games here on the Astound TV Network.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Astound Broadband or any other agency, organization, employer or company.

Coach Jarrett Carnes joined the Astound TV Network in 2022, contributing a regular “video blog” on the local hoops scene during the winter sports season and putting the spotlight on the top news, teams and players in the ATVN viewing area.

In his fourth podcast this winter, Coach Carnes reviews the regular season and the EPC league playoffs and previews the upcoming District XI playoffs.

Check back for more of Coach Carnes’ insights on the district and state playoffs for Eastern Pennsylvania girls basketball here on our website in a couple weeks!

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PROGRAMMING NOTE:

Tune in for a comprehensive preview of the entire District XI playoffs on this week’s “ATVN SportsTalk,” complete with keys to victory, player profiles and winning team predictions.  ATVN customers can watch the show anytime On-Demand!

Also, be sure to check out our broadcast schedule here on our website for this weekend’s opening round of the district playoffs and the District XI 3A wrestling championship.  Next week we will also be busy with more district basketball semifinal playoff games and regional wrestling coverage on the Astound TV Network.  Be sure to bookmark our website to catch our broadcast schedule of those big sport playoff matchups when the dates, times and other information about those events become available to us.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Astound Broadband or any other agency, organization, employer or company.

One of the most difficult aspects of being a freshman in college is adjusting to the lifestyle of a college student. As a sophomore in college, I believe this is true, but what I believe is even more difficult is adjusting to this new lifestyle while also being a new student-athlete, particularly as a female wrestler. When I arrived at East Stroudsburg University (ESU), I needed to learn new workout regimens, time management techniques, and eating habits. The largest difference, however, was having to learn a completely new wrestling style. Not only did I go from Folkstyle to Freestyle, but I also had to master the Freestyle scoring system.

Folkstyle was the only style of wrestling I was aware of for the first seventeen years of my life. I didn’t learn about freestyle wrestling until the summer of 2020. Here are some important distinctions I’ve discovered during the last three years. Women’s Folkstyle ranges from beginner to high school level. In this method, it is more important to try to control your opponent while on top, while your opponent on the bottom is attempting to escape. Locking your hands in specific positions is prohibited in Folkstyle and will result in a point being deducted from your score. It is generally not advisable to throw your opponent, but it is prohibited to suplex, or arch your opponent over your head.

Another way to lose points in Folkstyle is by passive wrestling, sometimes known as stalling; you get a warning and then lose points after the second call. I believe the largest distinction exists between the various scoring systems/periods for each style. Folkstyle wrestling consists of three two-minute bouts. One point is awarded for an escape, two points for a takedown or reversal, and two to three points for a near fall. Three team points are awarded for a decision (1–7-point difference), four team points for a major decision (8–14-point difference), five team points for a tech fall (15-point difference), and six points for a pin (opponent’s’ shoulders are flat on the mat).

Meanwhile, women can be seen competing in Freestyle from college to the Olympic level. The main goal of this style is to expose your opponent’s back while remaining on the bottom and avoiding being turned/exposed. Unlike Folkstyle, it is permitted to lock your hands at any point throughout the bout when wrestling freestyle. One cool feature is that you may toss your opponent, whether it’s a simple move like a lateral drop or a complex move like a suplex. Instead of stalling and giving up points right away, in freestyle, one wrestler is placed on a thirty-second shot clock, and if neither athlete scores any points during that time, the non-shot clock opponent is granted a point, and the other passive wrestler is cautioned.

The scoring system/periods for freestyle are more intricate; you wrestle for two three-minute periods separated by a thirty-second break. You get one point if you push your opponent out of the circle or reverse them. You get two points if you take them down to their elbows or knees. You also get two points for exposing the opponent’s back using techniques like a leg lace. You get four points if you take down your opponent from their feet to their back. Lastly, you get five points if you throw your opponent using complex moves like a suplex. Even team score differs significantly—for a team score, you score three team points for a decision (1–9 -point difference). There are no major decisions in freestyle; instead, a tech fall is a ten-point differential worth four team points, and a pin is worth five team points. One important team score distinction is that if you score a point at any point during the match, you receive one team point even if you lose the match. I enjoy freestyle wrestling because there is no opportunity for passive wrestling, which makes it more entertaining to watch, and if you are not good on the bottom after fifteen seconds, you are placed back on your feet.

Some not-so-complicated changes for me were that in high school, we normally practiced once a day, with a lift occasionally added. Meanwhile, we train/work out many times every day at ESU. We have a lift in the morning or at night twice a week, followed by a later practice. On other days, we practice in the morning in the room or pool, then practice later in the day. Even if we only have one practice, I will try to get in two or three sessions, whether cardio or lifting. Because I work out several times a day, time management is essential in my life. Because I just practiced once a day or had matches barely an hour away in high school, I had plenty of time to finish my homework or study. Meanwhile, in college, I’m juggling numerous classes, wrestling, preparing for matches that are at least two hours away, and now clinical hours for my degree. I spend many nights at the library, which is not fun, but you got to do what you need to do. The most significant lesson I learnt was the importance of eating a well-balanced diet. Because many of the matches I wrestled in high school were Madison style, making weight was not a problem. In college, my freshman year, I lost so much weight quickly by eating a balanced diet and working out that I always weighed at least one pound under my weight class. Despite everything, I grew into a better version of myself.

As I speak, if you are uninformed of what is going on with Sanction PA, there are currently 100 high school girls’ teams who have exceeded the PIAA requirement to be voted for sanctions as of February 14, 2023. We now have the ability to hold formal state finals similar to the ones held in Hershey, Pennsylvania for boys. Every day, I am grateful to be a part of this drive for sanctioning, as well as to all of the people I have met through this sport. I’m even more thankful for the lessons I’ve learned in the last two years at ESU. Wrestling in college requires a lot of hard work, dedication, and many sleepless nights, but it is one of the most gratifying experiences you can have. My high school coaches, college coaches, and parents have always informed me that “wrestling is wrestling” no matter what.

It’s been a little while since we’ve had an opportunity to look back and feature highlights from our recent broadcasts of high school sports on the Astound TV Network.

Now, here’s part one of our look back at the best plays and highlights of games and matches this winter on ATVN…

1. Astound Sports: Northampton vs. Liberty (12/22)
   
   
2. Astound Sports:   Saucon Valley vs Pen Argyl (12/22)
   
   
3. Astound Sports: Southern Lehigh vs. Salisbury (12/22)
   
   
4. Astound Sports: Parkland vs. Liberty (12/22)
   
   
5. Astound Sports:  Notre Dame vs. Southern Lehigh (1/23)
   
   

Check back to our website for more samples of the best plays from this winter’s high school sports seasons, along with more commentaries on local wrestling and basketball action. 

Also, keep referring back to our website for the latest schedule information on playoff basketball games and post-season wrestling matches on ATVN!

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Astound Broadband or any other agency, organization, employer or company.

After Monday night’s thrilling double overtime Bethlehem Catholic victory on ATVN and before preparing for our final regular season high school sports event of the winter on Tuesday, I did a little reflecting back over the last couple of months…

In 1969, the Beatles formed an idea to “Get Back” to what they had done before their rise in fame with the way they would put their music together.

We had a similar idea at the ATVN studio this winter – to get back to putting our high school sports schedule together the way we did before COVID (and all the resulting after-effects) which slashed the way we had “normally” covered local sports the last few years.

  At the same time, we additionally tried to incorporate brand new elements for our viewers, and succeeded by including the following list of “first-time ever” events broadcast on our network:

• First-ever EPC girls basketball regular season game
• First-ever Colonial girls basketball regular season game
• First-ever Colonial League wrestling match 
• First-ever women’s wrestling match 
• First-ever girls basketball regular season doubleheader
• First Colonial baseball championship

And… we also featured:

• More Colonial League games than ever before
• More local schools than ever before
• Regular blog entries here on this website promoting women’s basketball and wrestling all season long

We accomplished all the above while still bringing our audience many of the most competitive games of the year, including the two down-to-the-wire games we brought you last Monday (and, for anyone who spends any time around high school kids will tell you, it’s not always easy to predict what 15-year-olds will be like or how well they’ll play on any given day).

Things were complicated a bit by some rather dramatic (and last-minute) changes in “traditional” scheduling by the local schools themselves as the officiating shortage is beginning to impact the scholastic sports landscape (more on this matter coming up later this year).

We have received a lot of great comments about what we were able to do this winter from our viewers and we were very happy that they took the time to share their opinions and positive thoughts about our new game plans with us.

We made some bold predictions several months ago about what we were looking to accomplish and a number of things had to go right in order for us to pull all of them off. 

Thanks to a great effort by a lot of different people, and judging by the positive responses from our viewers…we did it!

But speaking of offering “thanks…”

First, we could not have accomplished all of this without the incredible cooperation of the local schools and their athletic directors, administrators, coaches and staff.

To the teams and student athletes themselves for putting on some great performances, both with very competitive games and some great individual performances throughout the season.

Our crew had to deal with some radical changes in how we implemented our schedule and were amazingly flexible and accommodating to some new ways of doing things, in addition to doing their usual first-rate, quality job in bringing local sports home to our viewers.

Our own ATVN administration was unbelievably helpful and supportive in enabling us to build our broadcast schedule and maintain our ability to carry out our goal to broaden our local coverage and try to satisfy the needs of as many of our viewers as humanly possible.

We also had unbelievably good fortunes from a weather perspective, which not only reduced our “normal” number of postponed contests but also (not counting the issues raised by the officiating shortage) kept radical rescheduling to a minimum this winter…I’ll leave that up to you in terms of assigning credit for that one.

Last and certainly not least, in addition to everything we did “sports-wise,” our annual Dream Come True telethon raised a record amount of money this past winter and surpassed our total from two years ago by over $43,000.  Once again, all the credit for this goes to our viewers for participating and donating money to this great cause, along with all the behind-the-scenes personnel involved in putting the entire event together.

But much like a coach will do after a quality win, our celebration will be short-lived as we get ready for our next chapter and look ahead to making even more additions and bringing in new elements for the next sports season.

Before we do, I did want to extend one more heartfelt appreciation for everyone’s efforts and a sincere “thank you” to everyone involved in this process.

Now, let’s bring on the winter sports playoffs!!!

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Astound Broadband or any other agency, organization, employer or company.

Everyone has heard the statement “It’s never too late to start” at least once in their lifetime. Me, I have been told this all my athletic life.

In the early years of my life, wrestling was a year-round sport in my brother’s life, and it soon became a crucial part of my life. I would spend hours upon hours in a smelly gym just watching my big brother on the mat. As a child, I remember my parents letting me run up and down the gym hallways playing with random kids to try to release all my built-up energy. This continued until I was about four years old when my parents finally decided to take my point and put it into something more useful, aka sports.

Growing up, there were many sports I tried; the first being soccer. I loved running up and down the grass field trying to score goals every weekend. My parents then decided to add gymnastics and tee-ball into the mix. Little did I know in the fall of 2010, I would trade in soccer for my primary fall sport, field hockey, which lasted eleven years. I was lucky enough to be coached by my mom for five of those eleven years.

When I reached fourth grade, instead of sitting at my brother’s matches all day, I took up a winter sport and started playing basketball. Funny enough, in my first year of playing, we won the league championships. In the spring, I continued to do softball until seventh grade, when I decided to try out for the middle school club lacrosse team. Once I reached seventh grade, I had to start trying out for sports teams, but luckily I was able to continue playing field hockey in the fall and lacrosse in the spring. During the winter though, I missed being in the wrestling atmosphere, so I decided to hang up my basketball shoes and manage the middle school’s wrestling team.

In high school, I kept playing field hockey and managing wrestling but sadly gave up lacrosse. Since field hockey was my primary sport, I focused on getting better by doing spring/summer/winter leagues and going to clinics. I believed that field hockey was going to be the sport I would play in college. Who knew my junior year of high school would change my plans?

In my brother’s senior year of high school, he wrestled under one of Easton’s legends, JaMarr Billman. I had the privilege of managing the wrestling team under him during my first two years of high school. The fall of 2019 came, and I was done with my junior field hockey season. I was super excited to be back in the sweaty room cleaning the mats until I saw a Twitter post on the Easton Wrestling page saying, “Easton Wrestling sign-ups for this upcoming year…This is for both male and female HS wrestlers.”

I showed my parents this tweet right away. We talked all night about if I should go for it. My dad told me, “You are not nearly at the level of experience as these boys and they are going to be bigger than you, but you know it’s never too late to try.” He tells me til this day that he should have let me wrestle sooner. I was so excited to now be the one making the mats sweaty. I never let anything deter me from going to practice every day. I would get tossed around by my male teammates but that never stopped me. After a while, they started to embrace my presence there and helped me develop my wrestling technique.

Coach Billman never shied away from challenging me and teaching me, which to me meant everything. I lost every match that year, but I was grateful to be part of the team. That first season was over just like that, and it was time for our annual banquet. I remember sitting there during the award ceremony portion of the banquet when the Dick Rutt Memorial Award was being presented; an award for an individual who is hard-working and dedicated to the sport. My brother had won the award his senior year, so I was excited to see who the next recipient of it would be. All of the sudden, I heard my name being called. I was in shock, to say the least, and didn’t think I deserved it being only my first-year wrestling. I grabbed it and looked at it and was so proud to have been selected for it. In the back of my head, I did know that I had put my all into the season. After that moment I thought perhaps this would be my new primary sport.

The summertime came and I started to go to wrestling clubs. I went to one club by East Stroudsburg University, which is where I met my college coach, Coach Nieves. I would spend every Monday and Wednesday learning from him. It was my new love to where I would even go after field hockey practice. I worked hard in the room and, like any wrestler in front of a college coach, I wanted to make a good impression. After practice one day, Coach Nieves asked if I would be interested possibly in coming to wrestle at ESU. I remember thinking “Really, I only wrestled for one year. Why would you want me? I am not that high level.” Then he said to me, “Cam, I know you only wrestled for a year, but with your hard work and dedication mentality, you can be great at ESU.” Of course, I discussed this with my parents because I had only been wrestling one year and many college girl wrestlers have been wrestling since they were little. There would be some tough competition and being a student-athlete with a very demanding major, Athletic Training, would take a lot of dedication, effort, and time management as well. It was a big decision, but I wanted to take the chance.

On November 11th, 2020, I officially signed my letter of intent to pursue my athletic and academic career as a wrestler at East Stroudsburg University, and I could not have been more excited about the journey.

My first year in college did become quite the journey. I came into freshman year with a tear in my UCL; it happened while wrestling during the summer. Then not long into the semester, we started two-a-day workouts and the start of weight management. Sadly, due to Covid-19, our season was a bit disrupted, but we still found ways to get multiple workouts in a day. This all allowed me to get to know my future teammates more, so I appreciated that. In a blink of an eye, November came, and it was the start of our official season. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the starting lineup, but I continued working on my technique and getting better every day. There were many losses in my first season as a Warrior but also small victories of improvement every week. In one match, I ended up pinning a girl that had pinned me at the beginning of the season.

My regional tournament did not go as planned either, but Coach gave me some motivational words which got me pumped for my sophomore season. I did begin that next season strong until I developed back and shoulder problems, thus not allowing me to get many matches under my belt before winter break. Unfortunately, I am now out for the rest of the season due to these upper back issues. I hope to get better over the next couple of months so I can become stronger for next year. As many people say, “Wrestling is important, but your health is the most important”.

To any girl thinking about starting to wrestle, do it! It might seem scary at first, but it gets you into the best shape of your life. It teaches life lessons of hard work and dedication that will carry on with you throughout life and give you friendships that will last a lifetime. Most importantly, for anyone reading this article, I hope you remember, “IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO TRY!”

Liberty Girls Basketball Head Coach Jarrett Carnes joined the Astound TV Network in 2022, contributing a regular “video blog” on the local hoops scene during the winter sports season and putting the spotlight on the top news, teams and players in the ATVN viewing area.

In his third podcast this winter, Coach Carnes reviews the first half of the high school basketball season in the Lehigh Valley and previews the final weeks of the regular season leading up to the league playoffs.

Check back for more of Coach Carnes’ insights and highlights on Eastern Pennsylvania girls basketball in a couple weeks!

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PROGRAMMING NOTE:

You’ll be able to see Coach Carnes’s Liberty Hurricanes girls basketball program against Bethlehem Catholic, this Tuesday, January 31, live at 9:30pm on ATVN.

It will follow our live coverage of Northampton at Parkland girls basketball earlier that same evening. We will also have the undefeated Easton girls basketball team against Nazareth next Friday, February 3.

Make sure you bookmark and refer back to our broadcast schedule here on our website for all the exciting local sports action as we close out the final few weeks of the winter sports regular season before the playoffs get underway!

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Astound Broadband or any other agency, organization, employer or company.

I have had the pleasure to be around a great number of championship ceremonies and “medal ceremonies,” where sports champions have their gold and silver medals draped around their necks after a winning season.

I have also had coaches tell me that these ceremonies are some of the most memorable moments of their entire career, and the exchanges between a head coach and their student-athletes are some of the most emotional and heart-telling conversations that one can experience.

Many coaches work with their students for many months, if not years…often starting before the students enter high school and spend incalculable amounts of hours working and training their kids which help them to reach their ultimate goal.

But I had a very unique experience when I and several representatives from Astound had the pleasure of attending the EPSEL Awards Ceremony this past week.

Astound was the sole sponsor of this year’s eSports league competition, which featured 15 different school districts in our coverage area and had 30 different teams participating.  The event was the Rocket League soc cer event, complete with student-athletes competing in virtual race cars.

The trophy and gold medal ceremony was held at Parkland High School in South Whitehall Township, which was appropriate since the Trojans had been one of the first to have an organized team…

And, for the second year in a row, they captured both the varsity and the JV level championships.

But when student-athletes, whose ages ran the gamut from freshman to senior levels, met at the Parkland High School conference center to get their medals from their head coach, they did something I had never before seen at a medal crowning ceremony…

They introduced themselves to each other!

The middle ceremony was the first time the participants actually got to meet each other in person and in fact, this was the first time that their head coach had seen his students face to face. Through the miracle of the internet, all previous conversations and meetings were done online.

Such is life for the most successful program of the hottest sport in the world right now.

These students worked together this past fall competing amongst the other best programs in Eastern Pennsylvania.  They did not discuss strategies in advance, they did not game plan each event and they didn’t even know their teammates’ real names.

But, to quote one of these athletes at the ceremony, they were “just that good.”

Truly, they were and enabled themselves to come up with a winning formula on the spot each time, culminating with a defended league championship.

In April, they will embark on a six-week state championship competition.  The finals are tentatively slated to take place at Harrisburg University near the state capitol.

But the other certainty is that eSports is here to stay and the ways and methods that student-athletes use to capture a title now-a-days is not like anything we have ever seen before.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Astound Broadband or any other agency, organization, employer or company.

We have been blessed to add several new guests to our “ATVN SportsTalk” show over the last year and I’m pleased to announce that Renee Washington will be making her debut on our program this Thursday, live at 7pm.

Renee graduated just a few years ago from Lehigh University, yet already has had some amazing experiences in her career!

She is a three-time All-American and Hall of Fame soccer player. Renee has worked with ESPN, Fox Sports, and MLB Network. She is the host of “Beyond the Headlines with Renee Washington” podcast, covering all things sports, music, and entertainment. She has also contributed to the “Daily Dive” covering the NLL, and “Swinging and Missing” covering Major League Baseball. She has covered all sports collegiately or professionally and most recently worked with the NBA, WNBA, NFL, NLL, MLS, and MLB.

Outside of reporting, Washington is also a motivational speaker, entrepreneur, small business owner and author. In December of 2020, she launched the organization “Planted, Not Buried” focused on empowering, educating, and inspiring others through access to resources, events, and more.
This past week she worked the Penn versus Harvard Men’s Basketball game for ESPN.

On this Thursday’s show we’ll be talking about all of those experiences as well as discussing some local college basketball in both the Lehigh and Delaware Valley regions.

Additionally, we’ll have insights on some of the recent developments locally so far this winter in the Lehigh Valley–including the controversial Emmaus vs. Pocono Mountain West game last weekend.

Be sure to tune in or set your DVDs for this Thursday’s “SportsTalk.”

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And speaking of local sports…

We have a busy week – and will be breaking new ground – coming up over the next several days on ATVN!

In addition to having two Lafayette College basketball games, we will be presenting the first-ever regular season girls basketball game in our network’s history. Two of the top teams in our area, Emmaus and currently undefeated Easton, will face off against each other. Our “other” matchup Tuesday will be Whitehall versus Freedom–a game that the Pennsylvania Cable Network has selected to pick up our feed and broadcast across the Commonwealth.

We also will have our first-ever Colonial League wrestling broadcast, featuring Saucon Valley and Notre Dame–two schools who faced off in the state championship tournament last season.

In two weeks on “SportsTalk,” we will have District XI Chairman Bob Hartman on to preview this year’s revamped district wrestling playoff formula, discuss his hiring of former Elon University assistant Andy Marino as the new head coach of the Whitehall football team, and a number of other local issues that are affecting the sports communities in our coverage area.

Also coming up, more insights on the march for women’s wrestling as it looks to gain official sanctioning in Pennsylvania with commentary from our own Cameron Nunez, and another edition of “Coach Carnes’ Corner” focusing on the local women’s basketball landscape.

Don’t look now, but we are also already less than a month away from the winter league and district high school playoff contests getting underway, which means a TON more scholastic sports action coming to the Astound TV Network through the entire postseason for the next two months.

Make sure you bookmark and keep checking back to our website for more basketball game and wrestling match updates as we bring you even more “firsts” to our television audience this winter!

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Astound Broadband or any other agency, organization, employer or company.

Introduction from Chris Michael: Last month we welcomed Cameron Nunez as the newest member of the ATVN Sports family.

She brings several unique experiences to the table.  A member of the National Honor Society and field hockey program, Cameron gained attention as a student-athlete with the first-ever Easton girls wrestling program (one of the first sanctioned programs in Pennsylvania). She is currently an athletic training major while wrestling collegiately at East Stroudsburg University.

This week, she continues her story as the sport continues towards scholastic sanctioning in Pennsylvania.

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Growing up, I was always told that “growth takes time” which has shown to be a deception in recent years for the sanctioning of girls/women’s wrestling. “Women’s wrestling is one of the fastest-growing sports at the scholastic and collegiate levels,” according to the NWCA, which is one of the most astonishing things to hear and see. As much as this is a new developing sport, it is necessary for me to first discuss who came before and broke the stigma of wrestling being a “male” sport.

I had spent most of my life watching male against male wrestling contests until one cold day in 2011 when I saw Kasey Kruczek. My father and I went to watch Easton Wrestling on a frigid winter day when I was nine years old. I was sitting in the bleachers when I noticed this blonde-haired girl from Easton wrestling some boy. Of course, I was taken aback by this and asked my father who she was. His response was, “Oh, that’s Kasey Kruczek, she used to wrestle for the Forks program when Nick was a novice and now she wrestles for Easton.”

This, I believe, was the turning point in my realization that wrestling is not simply a male sport. She will always be my inspiration and one of the people who helped me fall in love with the sport. I’m grateful to her for paving the road for female wrestling in the Lehigh Valley.

When my parents decided to let me wrestle when I was a junior in high school, I was ecstatic and eager to take on the challenge. Of course, you’d assume I beat every boy every time I stepped on the mat. Unfortunately, such was never the case. They’d fling me around even if I weighed twenty pounds more than some of the guys at practice. It made me apprehensive when I had to wrestle boys my own weight.

So, when it came to JV districts, I was mostly worried about what would happen. I believe I put up a good fight but was always pinned in the end. During this time, I hoped I could have wrestled a girl for some friendly competition. We then learned about the MyHouse PA Girls State Championship, which was to be held in Gettysburg, PA. Unfortunately, there were no girls in the room to wrestle at the time, and the boys were preparing for their states. My father chose to contact Kasey Kruczek because she was one of the girls’ coaches at Parkland High School, which had a large number of female wrestlers.

I had no idea those few practices would be the entire reason I wanted to seriously tackle wrestling!

The Parkland High School practices remain some of my favorite wrestling experiences to this day. It was one of the first times I felt like I was a part of something bigger than myself. I also met Brooke Zumas, the head coach of Parkland Girls Wrestling and a key figure in the “#Sanction PA” movement. She would later pave the way for me to speak about women’s wrestling in Pennsylvania. It was my first-ever girls “states” (March 2020), the day following boys states, and I was ready to wrestle. When I stepped in the gym, there were about a hundred females in this small gym, ranging from novice to high school, all vying for the same gold medal.

Unfortunately, I did not place, but it was an experience that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

A few weeks later, I received a text from Brooke Zumas asking if I was interested in doing a Zoom interview with a reporter, which of course I said yes to and was thrilled that she thought of me. This led to other interviews with numerous local and state news organizations. I even got to meet 2004 Olympic wrestler Tela O’Donnell via Zoom. It was a fantastic start to something wonderful.

May 26th, 2020 was a significant day – not just for the Easton wrestling community, but also for the state of Pennsylvania. My alma mater, Easton Area High School, officially established girls wrestling as a sport on this day. I was overjoyed to learn that I would be able to practice and compete on my school’s official girls team during my senior year.

In the weeks leading up to the start of the season, Pennsylvania would sanction seven more female wrestling  teams. In my final season as an Easton Red Rover, I had numerous wins but also several losses.

Then came March, and it was time for my second MyHouse PA State Championships appearance. There were roughly a hundred more girls this year than last. It was a breathtaking sight to behold!

Again, I did not place, but I was able to see the development of my teammates and other girls I met the previous year, which was far more rewarding than any gold medal.

For those who are unaware of what is going on with Sanction PA, there are currently ninety teams sanctioned out of the required one hundred. Girls wrestling is on the verge of becoming an official sport in Pennsylvania. Bethlehem Catholic, Easton, Freedom, Leighton, Liberty, Palisades, Parkland, Pocono Mountain East, and Pocono Mountain West are among the district eleven teams that have already been sanctioned. We can have formal state finals like the boys state tournaments in Hershey, Pennsylvania, once we get 100 teams sanctioned.       .   

Meanwhile, some collegiate women’s wrestling teams include Alvernia, Cedar Crest, Delaware Valley, East Stroudsburg, Gannon, Lock Haven, and York. Every day, I am grateful for all of the people I have met via this sport, as well as those who have inspired me to continue doing so. As Sally Roberts, one of my inspirations, had written “be a Trailblazer” and “Wrestle Like a Girl!”

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