Former East Valley wrestler hopes more young women drawn to sport

Rachael Coleck learned to ignore her detractors and fell in love with her sport anyway.

“I tried basketball,” she said, laughing. “I wasn’t good at it.”

Coleck grew up with brothers who wrestled. From an early age she was pulled on to the mat.

“I was their practice dummy,” she said. “They would practice their moves on me. And I liked it. And since they wrestled I grew up going to tournaments and watching them. I liked being around the sport.”

When she got to East Valley as a freshman, she decided she would follow that passion and turn out for the school wrestling team.

“My first year there was one other girl out for the team and she was a senior,” Coleck said. “It was her first year wrestling, too. That first year I got teased a lot. I got called a man and things like that. That was hard.

“But I got to a point where I felt like I had proved myself and where I’d proved that I belong in the wrestling room with the rest of the guys. That’s when I really started to enjoy the sport.”

Wrestling can be an intimidating sport for the beginners, but Coleck’s experience wrestling her siblings gave her a head start and kept her in the practice room. As a junior she placed sixth at state and as a senior she brought home a third-place trophy.

“Girls’ wrestling has really grown on the state level,” East Valley coach Craig Hanson said. “There’s a girls’ division and they have their own state tournament.

“But for whatever reason, it hasn’t caught on as well in the Greater Spokane area. We have a pretty good turnout here (at East Valley). We’ve met the state standard for qualifying a team for the last five or six years. West Valley is doing a good job promoting girls’ wrestling, too. Believe it or not, Springdale is doing a good job promoting it, too, and has even hired a girls’ coach. West Valley has hired a girls’ coach. We haven’t yet, but I’m hopeful.”

Coleck said outside factors play a role in keeping girls from trying out for the sport.

“The guys love to tell stories about how hard it is,” she said. “That can be a little intimidating. And I’ve had complete strangers come up to me and tell me that I have absolutely no business wrestling – especially wrestling against boys.

“Wrestling is a difficult sport if you’re shy. You have to get out of your shell and force yourself to be outgoing. And it can break you down and force you to figure out who you are and what you want out of the sport.”

And there are boys who want no part of wrestling against a girl.

“They think it’s a lose-lose proposition,” she said. “lf they win, all they did was beat a girl. And if they lose, well, they lost to a girl and they won’t live that down.”

For her part, Coleck said she prefers the challenge of wrestling against boys, who are naturally stronger and pose more of a challenge.

“But I’ve had a lot of guys refuse to wrestle me,” she added. “They would rather take a forfeit than wrestle me.”

The sport got its biggest boost yet at the Olympic Games in Rio when U.S. wrestler Helen Maroulis won the gold medal at 55 kilograms in an epic Olympic final against Japan’s Saori Yoshida.

“That’s huge for the sport,” Hanson said. “That lends a whole new level of credibility to the sport. I hope it brings out a whole new bunch of young girls to take up the sport.”

It’s been a distinct challenge, but it’s one Coleck savors and hopes other girls will pick up the challenge and drive the sport forward.

For her part, Coleck has gone on to wrestle collegiately, first at Waldorf University in Iowa and now at Warner Pacific in Portland.

“When I was first wrestling in Iowa I found that college competition is very different from high school,” she said. “Women wrestlers come from all different ages, from 18 to a wrestler I recently faced who was 27.

“Women’s wrestling is growing so big we have our league: the Women’s Collegiate Wrestling Association (WWCA). Our league is growing so big that the NAIA is thinking about adopting our association. That would be a big development for our sport because we would have the same rules as the NAIA.”

Coleck enjoys the competition in and around Oregon, and Warner Pacific travels to Texas and Oklahoma for tournaments that feature some of the best competition.

And for her part, Coleck plans to continue to promote the sport.

This week she’s been working out with her alma mater, encouraging the current crop of girls wrestlers at EV.

“My boyfriend is a wrestling coach and he’s moving to Portland and bringing his wrestling program with him,” she said. “He coaches little kids – 5- and 6-year-olds. I’m so excited about being able to help him with it.”

Her career plans are to become an elementary teacher, which could lend itself to potentially coaching at the high school level.

“That would be interesting,” she said. “I’m still thinking about that. It would be fun.”