Lady Saint Alani Marrujo: 8th in the Nation for Girls Wrestling

On October 15, 2022, Alani Marrujo (11) became 8th in the nation for girls wrestling, allowing her to receive multiple college scholarships and offers. In tournaments, different wrestlers compete within their same weight class advancing by points made. There are five different ways to get points during matches: the takedown, an escape, the reversal, near falls, and penalty points.

 Scoring in different ways is very important to wrestlers because it’s not always about pinning your opponent down. Much like any other contact sport, wrestling is very technical

A takedown is when a wrestler takes his or her opponent to the mat on their knees, back, or buttocks from their starting position and gains control; This move would gain the wrestler six points. An escape would be getting away from this position, scoring the defensive wrestler one point. Another point that could be scored by the defensive wrestler would be the reversal. The reversal is when the wrestler moves from the bottom position to the top position and gains control of their opponent, therefore, reversing what the offensive wrestler did; this move scores two points. 

With over 9 years of experience, Alani is very familiar with the world of wrestling. When asked about the process of these competitions she explains, “you have to wake up super early to go weigh in and it depends on if you’re in JV or Varsity but if you’re in JV you wrestle first but if you’re in Varsity you wrestle at like twelve or two even though you’re there all day.” She mentioned the process of advancing to the next level saying, “there’s a winning bracket and there’s a losing bracket and whoever wins in the winning bracket they advance to semi-finals and then finals and whoever wins that is in first, but for the losing bracket you have to wrestle 7 to 8 more matches to fill in for places like second through eighth”.

When asked about her placing in nationals she was pretty surprised, saying that she didn’t expect to get that far in the match, and she surely didn’t expect the number of offers she received from colleges, especially with the number of injuries she’s sustained within the season.