Three years ago, Pioneer Valley High School didn’t have a girls’ wrestling team. If a girl wanted to wrestle, she had to compete with the boys.
Last month, Coach Justin Magdaleno and the Pioneer Valley girls’ wrestling team won the state championship.
Well, technically, they won the California Girls Invitational. Girls’ wrestling hasn’t been certified by the CIF yet, though there’s a hearing next month on that very subject. Still, everyone in the wrestling community calls it the state championship. Having beat out more than 500 wrestlers from schools all across the state, the Pioneer Valley girls are, undoubtedly, the state champions of wrestling.
So just how did they do it?
“I’ve got girls that like to work hard,” Magdaleno said.
“Work hard” might be an understatement. Training starts with an hour run, then drills, which sound like a euphemism for “Oh God, it hurts.” Magdaleno described the routine, his voice a fascinating mix of commiseration and glee: “Wrestling conditioning is brutal: daily drills with live wrestling, sprints, pushups, and sit-ups.”
Then there’s the “new thing” the coach just learned at camp: 60 minutes.
“They don’t stop moving for an hour,” he said. “It’s absolutely insane. And all this after they’ve run five or six miles. Ask any wrestler on the team. That is hard.”
The girls all nodded.
The wrestlers are as different as they come: Ashley Spencer, a 16-year-old junior wearing green eye shadow and plaid-pink rain boots, placed third at the state tournament and wants to be a physical therapist and wrestle for Team USA. Seventeen-year-old senior Raeann Alnas was wearing a letterman jacket and wants to be a pediatrician. Magdaleno chimed in: “She’s got the brains for it.”
No good sports saga is complete without The Rivalry.
In the fledgling world of girls wrestling, Oxnard Pacifica high school is fast becoming Pioneer Valley’s chief opponent. Pacifica’s head coach, Darren Hatch, is good friends with Magdaleno, and their friendship seems to have trickled down to the girls on both teams who, according to Hatch, regularly keep in touch between wrestling meets.
“It’s funny to walk around my campus and see girls wearing PV wrestling T-shirts,” he said. “I do a double-take, but that’s how it’s been with girls wrestling.”
Hatch sees the mutual respect and friendship between opponents as the major difference between boys’ and girls’ wrestling. He’s honest about just how odd that can be to a couple of guys who grew up in boys’ wrestling.
“In our experience, it’s very ironic,” he said. “For the girls, it just comes naturally. It’s a neat balance of competition and rivalry and admiration and respect.”
The state tournament marked the last time some of these girls will ever hit the mat in competition. And that, Coach Magdaleno said, is one of the hardest parts of his job.
Alyssa Jeffres is one of the seniors Magdaleno has to say goodbye to this year. The 17-year-old placed fifth at the state tournament. For someone who’s been so good at wrestling, it almost never happened for Jeffres. There was no girls’ wrestling team her first two years of high school, and her dad told her she couldn’t wrestle with the boys.
Luckily for her (and Pioneer Valley), the wrestling program started her junior year, and dad gave his blessing. Mom, she said, was just worried she’d get hurt. Jeffres laughed at that while glancing down at a souvenir from her last time on the mat: a knee brace.
She doesn’t remember the exact moment she hurt her leg, only that when they asked her if she wanted to keep wrestling, her answer came easily: “Yeah, I’m going to. It’s my last match!”
“Because of my knee, I couldn’t do my normal …” Jeffres looked for just the right words, “… pick them up and slam them.”
Coach Magdaleno and the other girls burst out laughing at her casual delivery.
“Oh, yeah, she just does it,” Spencer said.
“The last match, she kept hitting me in the head,” Jeffres said. “I won, but it wasn’t exactly how I wanted to finish my last match.”
How did she want to finish it?
“I wanted to slam her,” she said, eyes flashing.
Once the girls headed home after staying late on a Friday, Coach Magdaleno reminisced on his short coaching career.
“This has been the most amazing experience,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
“I hope to fill my hand up with state championship rings,” he said earnestly.
Having gone from no program at all to state champions in two years, Magdaleno and his Pioneer Valley girls wrestlers might just do that. m
Contributor Nicholas Walter picks up and slams his opponents. Challenge him through the editor at rmiller@santamaria sun.com.
This article appears in Feb 12-19, 2009.
