Sophomore Emily Llamas added wrestling to her athletic career at Eaglecrest as a freshman. She intimidates opponents on the mat but is a total sweetheart anywhere else you find her.

    A passion for wrestling was developed for Llamas through the duels that took place when she and her friends roughhouse with each other.

    “My best friend’s brother is a wrestler and when I went to their house he would always just wrestle me,” she said. “I gave it some thought and decided that I was just gonna go for it.”

    Emily’s former Social Studies teacher and current dean, David Derose, also helped weave wrestling into Emily’s life by talking her into it during the seventh grade.

    Although it is evident that wrestling is a male dominant sport, Llamas states that being the only girl on the team doesn’t affect her in any way; it serves as a factor for her to work even harder than those around her.

     “I don’t mind it at all. It feels normal. There’s nothing that separates me from the team to make me feel any different; I’m just another wrestler,” she said.

    Competition is a big part of wrestling just as it is in any other sport. At Llamas’ state tournament on Saturday, February 4, the competition got heavier and heavier as each wrestler inched toward earning first place.

    “I love competing, I think it’s good for girls in general to go out there and [say] I can be where any boy in this room is,” Llamas said. “I deserve to be here as much as everyone else does as long as I work hard enough for it.”

    Being ranked third in the tournament, Llamas reviewed her past with each opponents she had been scheduled to compete with.

    “I’m wrestling a girl Tatyana from Mountain Vista, and I’ve already beaten her, so I expect to beat her again,” she said. “My second match would be against a girl from Grandview who I lost to by one point, so I’m really [aiming to put up a fight] in that match.”

    Wrestling has helped Llamas become the successful sophomore she is today.  She has pushed herself to a whole new level that she never knew existed.

    “I have had to really push myself to do things that make me uncomfortable but better than I was yesterday, and I love that,”she said.   

    There’s a famous quote from wrestler Dan Gable that she said she has built her entire athletic career around: “Once you’ve wrestled, everything else in life is easy.” Llamas integrates this quote into her life by pinning every task with a positive attitude and acknowledging that she will place her best foot forward at any given moment.

    “I love wrestling. I love the competitiveness and the physicality of it,” she said.

  Although it took her parents by surprise at first, they are in full support of her choice to wrestle.

    “We’ve always decided to let her do what she wants. She did ballet by the time she was three right up to about eleven years old; then she totally just switched up on us and did soccer and in middle school she came home one day and told us ‘I’m gonna wrestle,” Llamas’ mother said. “It’s definitely rough to watch, but her dad is all for it, he has no worries about her doing it. It made him happy to know she wanted to wrestle.”

Heading into the CHSSA Girl’s State Wrestling Tournament, Llamas was held in the dominating mindset.

     “It’s just you out there on the mat, so you can’t put the blame of losing on anybody else but yourself,” she said.

    Thankfully, Llamas has been blessed with coaches who are very supportive of each and every wrestler.

    “They really do believe in me and want me to do good,” she said. “It’s nice to know that they’ll always have my back.”

     As an exceptional athlete, Llamas not only is a wrenching wrestler, she also runs cross country and is a member of the soccer team. Multi-sporting can be difficult, but Llamas indicates that the love she contains for each sport is what keeps her going in stressful times.

    “I love each sport, but when it’s wrestling season, I assure that my time and dedication will fulfill the need of my position in wrestling,” she said. The same applies to her dedication to her other sports.

    When she is granted extra time during each season, Llamas cross trains to enhance her performance.

     “After cross country practice I go to preseason wrestling practices,” she said.  “I try to go to as many practices as possible. During the summer I do a lot of wrestling camps which really do help; I went from winning one match last year to taking first and a tournament.”

Looking into the future, Llamas envisions herself as a collegiate wrestler and or a collegiate soccer player.

“There are a lot of scholarships for wrestling, and if I could get one and be able to wrestle in college, that would be pretty amazing,” she said. “It would be even better if I were granted the opportunity to participate in both wrestling and soccer in college.”

Ending this season, Llamas defeated Mount Vista’s Tatyana Johnston and competed with a Grandview opponent but was pinned dropping herself down to the consolation bracket. Using her opponents as a mop on the floor, Emily dominated at state and took third in the 101 division, bringing home some hardware.

Llamas strives to work harder than she’s ever worked during the off season in order to assure that she’ll be back to finish what she’s started.

“I want to come back and make it to the finals next season,” she said. “Wrestling is the hardest thing you will ever do and you may not win every match, but as long as you are doing what you love and working to get better it’s all worth it in the end.”