With a height of 5 feet and 8 inches, and weighing in at 120lbs; senior Abreanna Wesley looks as though she should be a ballerina or ice-skater.  But when this senior suits up everyday, it’s a wrestling uniform that she puts on.

“My half brothers did it, and I have always been a tomboy. I just felt like I was very in tuned to it. So I joined the team,” Wesley said.

Wesley is the only girl on the wrestling team with 11 boys.

“I’m not like most girls, I like contact sports and I’m very competitive, I really like that aspect of wrestling, its also a chance for me to just get out and mellow down,” Wesley said.

While Wesley may love doing what she does, her team was less sure at first.

“You don’t have to try out for wrestling so I just showed up and was on the team. At first the boys were afraid of having to wrestle a girl, like ‘what if I beat her up! Now we are very close, we’re like a mini family. We joke around and hang out with each other,” Wesley said.

Being a female wrestler is not without it’s pitfalls.

“So far I’m the only girl wrestler that I’ve seen at meets, and while my team is really accepting, other teams aren’t. I’ve gotten laughed at before and someone even refused to wrestle me,” Wesley said.

Wesley is also involved in including choir, piano, guitar and violin, which come with less of a physical challenge than wrestling.

“Sometimes it’s harder to wrestle as a girl, but I don’t want to be known as the girl that quit,” Wesley said.

While she may be the only female wrestler on the team so far, Wesley isn’t planning on stopping anytime soon.
“Sometimes people look at me funny, like they don’t believe that I wrestle, but    it’s what I do; and I love it. Plus it means that I totally kick butt at Twister,” Wesley said.