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By Todd Irwin
sports@altoonamirror.com
Northern Bedford juniors Kaylee Ebersole and Raegan Snider and Bellwood-Antis sophomore Juliette Cuevas will be a part of history when they step on a mat today at the Giant Center in Hershey.
The three area Central Regional champions will be wrestling in the first PIAA-sanctioned girls state tournament. The tournament will have 16-girl weight classes made up of qualifiers from four different regions -- Central, West, Southeast and South Central.
The tournament begins at 2 p.m. today with the first round. That will be the only round for the girls on the first day. The quarterfinals and first round of consolations are at 11:45 a.m. Friday.
"I'm extremely excited. I know the girls are too," Northern Bedford coach Zach Clark said. "They've been talking about it all week trying to fine tune everything and make sure they're ready for this weekend to compete."
The tournament will be a mixture of girls who wrestled for girls teams and those who wrestled for boys teams. Some girls will have vast experience in wrestling in big tournaments. Others haven't experienced that.
Snider, who is 22-3 and ranked fourth by PA-Wrestling.com at 155, finished as a runner-up at 155 at last year's MyHouse Girls State Championships. That tournament served as the state tournament before this season.
Snider opens with Connellsville's Western Regional fourth-placer Imani Cameron-Botti (22-11). If she gets to Friday's 7 p.m. semifinals, she could get North Allegheny's top-ranked Leyna Rumpler (32-1).
"Raegan Snider is already pretty comfortable with the big setting like this," Clark said. "She's wrestled in a lot of bigger national tournaments, especially in freestyle and Greco.
"I believe Raegan could be at the top of the podium. I know she's put the work in this year. I know she's seen a lot of these girls she's going to be competing against and she knows a lot about them. I know she has really high expectations for herself, and I believe she can absolutely reach them."
Ebersole (20-8) begins wrestling at 106 pounds against Pennsbury's Anya Abel (24-12). If Ebersole wins, she'd likely face York Suburban's Alysiana Price-Lerley (27-3) in the quarterfinals.
"For Kaylee Ebersole, it's going to be a little bit of a new experience," Clark said, "but I think she can definitely handle it. I think she'll do well as well."
Cuevas, a sophomore with a 7-1 record, captured the 100-pound title at the Central Regional with a 10-6 win over Moshannon Valley's District 5-6-9 champion Autumn Shoff.
Cuevas wrestles Mount Lebanon freshman Sophia Beanner (16-6) in the first round. A possible matchup with Bensalem's third-ranked Payton Hinkle (22-8) looms in the quarterfinals.
"I really want to place in states and I've had a great time," Cuevas told the Mirror on Saturday. "These girls were tough and they gave me the shove that I needed to show them what I needed to do."
Bishop McCort's Jordyn Fouse, who went 14-14 as a starter on the Northern Bedford's boys team two years ago as a freshman, is ranked second at 136 with a 32-1 record going into Hershey. Kennett's Haylie Jaffe (11-0) is the top seed for 136.
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