The Skyline women’s wrestling team made history in their first-ever home meet on Wednesday, Feb. 19, as they defeated Fresno City College 29-4 and Santa Rosa Junior College 24-15. This is the inaugural season for Skyline’s women’s wrestling team, so the match was a big milestone for the program.
Zayna Nasrah, Esmeralda Méndez, Jamie Micallef, and Annette Beltran all pinned at least one opponent in their respective weight classes and combined for a total of six wins and zero losses.
Freshman Nasrah started the match off with a bang as she dropped Fresno’s
Aretzi Gonzalez to the ground and pinned her to win the first match of the competition.
Freshman Graciela Caro said before the competition the team looked forward to wrestling in front of their home crowd for the first time.
“We have high hopes to win because we have a lot of family members here, since it’s a home meet, but we’re just trying to do our best,” Caro said.
While Skyline dominated the first competition with only one match loss, Santa Rosa kept the matches close as they led 15-9 going into the seventh match of the competition.
However, Santa Rosa ended the competition with a nine point deficit as Skyline’s wrestlers came back with three solid victories.
One of those victories came from Skyline freshman Micallef as she pinned her second consecutive opponent of the competition.
Micallef said that she credited the team’s success largely to their efforts in practice.
“We have been working in [practice] a lot more about being more aggressive, and I think we definitely showed that today,” Micallef said.
When asked what the team’s goal for the rest of the season was, Nasrah said that it’s the growth and recognition of the program.
“This is Skyline’s first ever women’s wrestling team, so gaining recognition to hopefully get more girls to try and join our team and to expand our team would be great,” Nasrah said.
Head coach Olga Camacho said that the match was a good learning experience for both the players and coaches.
“[The team] looks good, we have a lot of work to do…this is our first [home meet] so we are learning as coaches,” Camacho said.
The team’s next meet is Wednesday, Mar. 5 at Santa Rosa Junior College.