Yelm girls wouldn’t surprise anyone with a state wrestling repeat
Amy Earley prefers not to keep close track of the team score when her Yelm High School girls wrestling team competes in a tournament.
“I don’t want it to be about the team score. I want it to be about each individual girl doing the best she can,” Earley said.
Nonetheless, after the first day of Mat Classic XXIX last February, she and her husband couldn’t help but notice the Tornados topped the leaderboard. That night, they discussed the nuances of what would have to happen the next day for them to stay there.
“That’s when it became real and kind of scary for me,” Earley recalled. “We had such young girls last year. Brooklyn Cutler and Carly Smith were freshmen. They’d had great seasons, but we didn’t know how they were going to perform on that big stage.”
As it turned out, Smith finished second at 125 pounds to two-time state champion Brenda Reyna of Mount Vernon, who has gone on to excel as a freshman at McKendree University in Illinois. Cutler was fifth at 115.
When Federal Way’s Mariah Stewart took the mat for her 235-pound final, she needed a victory to vault the Eagles past Yelm into first place. Instead, Abby Lees of Washougal pinned her in the first round and the title belonged to the Tornados.
“That was amazing,” said Smith, currently top top-ranked girls wrestler in Washington at 130. “Our entire team was gathered around watching. When (Lees) won, we started cheering and screaming. I looked down and Amy was crying. It was a great moment.”
Earley’s emotion was understandable.
“I didn’t see that coming. Everything came together for us to get it,” she said.
This season, Yelm isn’t surprising anybody.
The Tornados are the state’s top-ranked girls team on Washington Wrestling Report, and have six wrestlers ranked in the top 10 of their weight classes — including junior Phoenix Dubose (third at 115), Cutler (seventh, 125), senior Chelsey Rochester (third, 140), senior Shelaha Brown-Stephens (eighth, 145) and senior Ashley Kile (eighth, 190) in addition to Smith.
A year ago, Dubose joined Smith and Cutler on the podium at the state tournament, claiming second at 115. Rochester finished eighth at 135.
“There’s an odd kind of pressure on us now,” Earley said, pointing to a surprising Union team as perhaps the biggest impediment to a second consecutive championship.
“We go to tournaments and if we have a bad day or one of our studs isn’t wrestling well people say, ‘Oh are you going to be able to repeat?’ ”
Smith, named a team captain in her sophomore season alongside Rochester, works to stay focused on the process rather than potential results.
“I don’t let expectations get in my head,” she said. “I keep doing my thing and keep practicing and putting in the work and hope for the best.”
“Being captain gives me the motivation to think ‘Oh this is my team, I want to take my team places, go places with my team, do well at state.’ ”
Earley believes Smith’s path from years of individual-only competition in youth wrestling to last season when, because the Yelm School District sends ninth-graders to middle school, she wasn’t attending classes with her Tornados teammates, to her experiences at state have all contributed to a steady improvement.
“Carly found a new love for the sport from last year to this year. Coming in second last year was humbling for her,” Earley said. “Everyone told her she’d be a four-timer and that didn’t work out. No one in her weight class has been able to come close to her this season, so we’re optimistic.”
Smith agrees placing second is not acceptable this season.
“That’s my No. 1 thing, I cannot stand losing. I’ll do everything in my power to not lose,” she said, also citing her “aggression” as one of her strengths.
Her coach agrees.
“Carly has a unique mental toughness. She’s a fighter,” Earley said. “If she had it her way she’d do MMA. She loves the physicality of the sport.
“Sometimes I have to tell her to take it down a notch so we don’t get penalized. A lot of the points she gives up are for taking a move too far. Girls rarely score on her offensively.”
Smith, who has a fascination with MMA but prefers to focus on a collegiate wrestling future and potential careers in medicine or law enforcement, has also embraced her leadership role.
“I give Carly every chance to sit with me in the corner and help coach her teammates,” Earley said. “She loves it. Last year she never would have done that. It’s been great to see her expand her thinking beyond herself.”
“They listen pretty well,” Smith said. “Me having the experience I’m having, they understand I’m not trying to be a know-it-all. They understand I know what I’m talking about and they respect that.”
Earley has gone the extra mile to expand her team’s understanding of the sport at higher levels, bringing in USA Wrestling team member Whitney Conder — who placed twice in the state boys tournament for Puyallup before going on to compete for Northern Michigan University and the U.S. Army — to do a clinic.
“I wanted them to see that next level of wrestling, what the Olympic training academy is about, what the Olympics are about,” Earley said. “Carly was entranced with Whitney.”
This story was originally published January 16, 2018 at 8:07 PM with the headline "Yelm girls wouldn’t surprise anyone with a state wrestling repeat."