To see the Nipomo High School girls’ wrestling team in action, walk through the gates of Nipomo High School, and bypass the main gym. Meander through a stretch of classrooms and arrive at a cluster of unremarkable portables.
Inside Room 127, though, is perhaps the most creative use of a portable you’ll ever see. Here, 20 Nipomo High School students are practicing their wrestling moves on a morning during their winter break.
“It’s ours,” Nipomo girls’ wrestling head coach Justin Magdaleno beamed about the practice facility. “It’s completely set up.”
The floor is covered from corner to corner with a soft black mat and the walls are decorated with inspirational posters, a white board of the team’s accomplishments, and more padding.
“The [Nipomo High School] yearbook bought us that mat,” Magdaleno said, pointing to the floor. “We’ve had some amazing support from the community.”
Playing its third season ever, the Nipomo High School girls’ wrestling team has quickly emerged as a force to be reckoned with on the Central Coast wrestling scene. After playing through some growing pains in its first two seasons as a team, Nipomo placed in the top 10 of every tournament it participated in this season.
“That didn’t happen the first couple of years,” Magdaleno said of the team’s consistency and growing reputation. “It was kind of hit and miss.”
Nipomo is led by the talents of state-ranked wrestler, junior Alexis “Crush” Garcia. Garcia is Nipomo’s heavyweight-class wrestler, and her mere presence in the ring can instill fear in her opponents.
“I’ll never forget. We were at a tournament and Alexis is wrestling this girl, and the girl was visibly shaking because she was scared,” Magdaleno said. “I think she pinned her in like 20 seconds because she was so scared.”
Garcia’s intimidating demeanor doesn’t come off in person. She’s charming and goofy in conversation. She said her progress over the past couple of years is mostly about gaining confidence.
“I used to go into matches scared and nervous,” Garcia said. “I had to change my mindset, and then I improved.”
Mackenzie Wisneski, a sophomore on the team who received honorable mention in CIF rankings, said that her improvement boils down to having more poise during matches.
“My first year I wasn’t confident, but then I got confident,” Wisneski said. “I know now how to stay calm and patient.”
“You can’t really wrestle when you’re nervous,” she added. “You have to be confident in what you can do, and you have to be calm.”
How did Magdaleno cultivate this remarkable confidence and maturity into a young wrestling team made up of a majority of players who had never wrestled in their lives?
To answer, he simply points to one of the posters up in Room 127 that reads, “Believe.”
“It starts with belief in yourself,” he said. “Wrestling is very mental. My biggest thing is always having a positive message.”
The team recently moved to Room 127 from a smaller training room, a testament to the growing popularity of girls’ wrestling since its conception in 2013.
When Magdaleno helped create a girls wrestling team two seasons ago, it debuted with bare minimum numbers on the roster: 14 members—one wrestler for each weight class. In wrestling, you ideally want two per weight class. The roster grew to 18 the next season, and now Nipomo has 24 girls participating.
Magdaleno attributes a great deal of the program’s growth to support from Nipomo’s administration, especially former Athletic Director Jim Souza and current AD Russ Edwards.
“We’ve had two ADs here, and they’ve both embraced our sport,” he said. “I think they like it because they know it’s going to get kids that maybe weren’t going to be athletes to be athletes and come out for sports.”
The players back up that theory. Garcia said that if not for wrestling, she probably wouldn’t be participating in Nipomo athletics.
“I tried water polo, and I didn’t like it,” Garcia said. “I think wrestling is the perfect fit for me. I love it.”
The best is yet to come in Nipomo’s season, according to Magdaleno and the players. The team is nursing some injuries right now and in the process of rebounding from a bout of the flu that infected the team.
“One of our captains has been injured all year; we’re going to get her back in the middle of the month,” Magdaleno said. “We also have another really talented freshman who’s injured but coming back soon. Those two will really add to our team.”
In looking to the future, Magdaleno muses about a team just a few miles down Highway 101 that has set the gold standard for girls’ wrestling.
“Pioneer Valley’s the team to beat in our area,” he said. “They’re the team you want to emulate. They’re tough top to bottom.”
Contributor Peter Johnson can be reached at pjohnson@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jan 7-14, 2016.