TACOMA – All it took was 58 seconds for Emily Ortiz to make history. With her pin against Spanaway Lake’s Karlee Brummett in the Girls 4A 145-pound championship at Mat Classic XXXVI on Feb. 21, Ortiz became the first Jackson wrestler – male or female – to win a state championship.
The whistle blew, and the Jackson cheering section erupted. When the official raised Ortiz’s arm in the air, blood could be seen oozing from her nose. Not that she cared. You get out what you put in, after all, and it’s only fitting Ortiz stood victorious dripping blood, sweat and tears.
And there were a lot of tears. Probably more from Jackson coach Chey Kawaihae, who has coached Ortiz since she started the sport in eighth grade. The two joined together in a long hug, sobbing into each other’s arms. They embraced all the work that went into building this moment, because in reality it did not take only 58 seconds; it was hours of training behind the scenes to reach this point.
“Just being my school’s first state champion feels really nice,” Ortiz said, with tissue paper clogging her left nostril. “I know I put a lot of work into this, and it paid off, and I was able to do it today.”
For Ortiz, that work went all the way to the last second.
Race against time
Ortiz was crying again, but not the “championship-winning euphoria” kind. It was early Thursday morning, before the opening rounds of Mat Classic at the Tacoma Dome, and Ortiz was running sprints in front of the nearby hotel. The Jackson senior woke up five pounds overweight with weigh-in just hours away.
The hotel gym had not opened yet, so she was outside, wearing layers, sprinting back and forth. She was cold, she was tired and her shins were aching. Making weight in time felt impossible, and Ortiz – the top seed in her weight class – thought her chance at a state championship would end before it even started.
“That day, she had to really dig through, find that second gear,” Kawaihae said. “She didn’t have water, she didn’t have food, she was like 0.2 (pounds) over (the cut-off) when we got here, and she had nothing in her. She had to find whatever it was to dig through.”
Leading up to the weigh-in, Ortiz was still running and checking the scale. This time, she knew her opponents were watching, and she thought to herself: “What would they think if they saw the first seed not make weight?”
With that extra ounce of motivation and a few more sprints, she somehow managed to hit the benchmark and remained eligible to compete.
“I had to find that inner part of me to be able to do it,” Ortiz said.
That was just half the battle. Now, after spending the morning depleting herself, Ortiz had to regain her energy. It helped that she had six hours before her first match, where she pinned Juanita’s Thessale Mika at 2:44, but she struggled through her 6-1 decision win against Lewis and Clark’s Kathryn Ambute-Gibson in the quarterfinals and did not feel back to 100 percent until the semifinals on Friday.
By the time the championship bout started, Ortiz looked fresh, making quick work of Brummett to earn the title. It’s something Ortiz never would have imagined when she nearly quit the sport soon after she started back in eighth grade. She stubbed her finger in one of her first matches, and felt it was “too much.” But she stuck with it after beating a boy in one of the following matches.
From there, she attended wrestling clubs and kept progressing. After placing seventh last year, Ortiz reached the mountaintop on Friday.
“What she got here is definitely what she deserved,” said Kawaihae, who has coached at Jackson for five years. “I’m just so proud of her, and she really did push through. … Just seeing that I can be that first one to get her name on top of that (Jackson gymnasium) wall, really means (a lot), but I really don’t care about my things. I care about what she does. Everything that happened was because of her.”
After a stressful championship weekend that nearly wasn’t, Ortiz plans to take a few weeks off before preparing for the Freestyle and Greco State Tournament in Spokane on May 3-4. But while waiting to be called to the podium, she was focused on her immediate next step.
“I know that I want a fruit tart,” Ortiz said. “I’m gonna get that.”
If nothing else, after her last 48 hours, she earned that.
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