By Nora LoCicero
The Western New England University women’s wrestling team is once again headed to regionals. The team itself is only a little more than three years old, and it started off with five women who called themselves “The Freshman Five.” Now, the team has a full lineup of women from 103 lbs to 207 lbs with a backup for every weight class, as well. There are a handful of scholars, including All-Americans and countless honors students. These twenty-eight hard-working women have practice six out of the seven days a week and most of them are in the gym, working out and practicing on their own time. This article is a look into what it is like to be on a wrestling team ranked in the top twenty-five in the country.
The wrestling room has two big mats and covers about eighty percent of the room. There are couches on the left side for lounging, and on the right, there are more mats accompanied by stationary bikes. Even before the clock hit 3:30 p.m., there were girls on the bikes warming up. Then it was time, they kicked off practice starting with a run around the room. Captain Janieliz Cotto, a senior wrestler, runs the warmups and yells out dynamic stretches to do as they move along the circle. One of them is “picking up the pennies” which is so unique. What they do is stop jogging and still move around the mats and they pick up imaginary pennies. After that, they move into six different lines to do more stretches. They touch their toes, open and close the gate, bear walk, stance in motion, shots, cartwheel on both sides, and parter. Then dispersing around the room, they did star drills, which always results in sweating. Although they do not always start with this warmup, they like to play handball and the team gets incredibly competitive.
Shalom Feliz López is a freshman from Rhode Island. She is a successful wrestler ranking third in the country at 180 lbs weight class as a collegiate D III wrestler. She is extremely humble, even though she has exceeded the definition of “badass” by showing off her tremendous abilities to be better than most women wrestlers. However, just like many college students, she struggles as well. Lopez said, “Something I’ve struggled with is keeping up with my grades and the amount of work that it is to balance out school, wrestling, work, and always being present at my fullest.”
That is something most college students could say, but to add wrestling on top of academics requires discipline and time management. Even though it can be a lot on her plate, she stated that her favorite part is “the sense of family – and I just came to love the girls on the team.” Being so far away from home it must be nice to have a “campus family” you see every day.
Most colleges and universities lack women’s wrestling teams, meaning many women do not have the opportunity to join such a team. Lopez expressed how grateful she is to have this opportunity to not only be on a women’s wrestling team but to go to regionals. She said she is extremely excited, and she should be because this is a chance for her to prove to herself that she can do it. This is a chance for her to help grow women’s wrestling and prove to people (and society) that women can be strong and be on teams, just as men. This year on January 17, 2025, the NCAA made women’s wrestling the 91st official championship sport in all three divisions.
The team’s season is close to an end with regionals on February 23 and nationals the weekend after. What have these women been working towards since mid-October? Well, it is because these two weeks of tournaments are the most elite wrestling tournaments you can find in our country. Women’s wrestling is still growing, and you can tell that by just looking at how fast WNE women’s wrestling has grown from five to twenty-five. Good luck to the fifteen women competing and if you want to watch them live, it will all be on FloArenaWrestling.
