Courtesy photo Alyssa Favara has found success in wrestling in Florida, Illinois, Michigan and now Pennsylvania.

Editor’s note: This is the second of a three-part series on female wrestling in the region.

Alyssa Favara started her competitive wrestling career relatively later in life, and she started it on a lark.

As a ninth-grade student at Palmetto Ridge High School in Naples, Fla., back in 2021, Favara attended the Florida High School Athletic Association’s boys high school state wrestling tournament with a friend, Hayley Peck.

“My cousin wrestled for the boys team, and I would always go to all of his tournaments, and I met a girl there, Hayley Peck, whose brother also wrestled,” Favara said. “We became friends, and during our freshman year of high school, we were watching the state tournament with our families, and I asked Hayley, ‘What if we wrestled?”’

“She looked at me like I was crazy and told me that girls don’t wrestle,” Favara added. “A coach overheard us talking and told us that we were both welcome to come to a practice. It started off as a joke, we went to a practice for a month, and we both fell in love with it. And now, four years later, we’re both wrestling at the college level.”

In her sophomore year of high school, Favara became a state champion at 190 pounds in the Florida High School Athletic Association’s girls state wrestling tournament in 2022, and, after transferring to Johnstown’s Bishop McCort Catholic High School the following year, Favara won a state title at 170 pounds in the non-PIAA sanctioned MyHouse girls state tournament.

She followed that up as a senior in the 2023-24 season by capturing the 190-pound girls championship in the first-ever PIAA sanctioned girls state wrestling tournament. While Peck is now competing in women’s college wrestling at North Central University in Napierville, Ill., Favara has transferred to Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich., to wrestle after putting together an impressive freshman collegiate season at Lock Haven University last season in which she compiled a 28-2 record and qualified for the NCAA Women’s Wrestling Tournament at 207 pounds before suffering a season-ending knee injury while competing in a quarterfinal-round match.

Favara, who currently lives in Bellwood with her mother, Christine Hescox, will attend Grand Valley on a wrestling scholarship and take a medical redshirt for next season after having undergone surgery on her knee to repair extensive damage.

“I tore four ligaments,” Favara said. “I completely tore my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), I tore both the medial meniscus and lateral meniscus, and I partially tore my MCL (medial collateral ligament). The recovery period is expected to last from nine to 12 months, and I’m doing rehab now, so I’ll redshirt and miss the next wrestling season and get back to competition in the 2026-27 season.”

Favara has taken a positive attitude about her setback.

“I was feeling really confident in the national tournament, feeling the best that I had all year,” Favara said. “Unfortunately, that happened, but it hasn’t deterred me. I have my full range of motion back after surgery, and I’ve already been cleared to run. I’m proud of how my first college season went and I know that when I get back to wrestling, my next season is going to be just as good, if not better.”

Jordyn Fouse, who was Favara’s wrestling teammate at McCort and will be her college teammate at Grand Valley, was also a state champion at 136 pounds in the inaugural PIAA sanctioned girls tournament as a junior in 2024. A 2025 graduate of McCort who began her wrestling career in the Northern Bedford County School District, Fouse recently qualified for the upcoming women’s age U20 Division World Freestyle Championships in Bulgaria at 68kg (149 pounds). She earned that spot on the United States team by winning a title in her division at the World Trials United States Marine Corps Women’s National Championship Series in Spokane, Wash., this past April.

Fouse said that Favara’s tenacity and work ethic are two of her best qualities on the wrestling mat.

“I’ve known her since I was in the 10th grade, we’re close friends, and we have really grown together as athletes,” Fouse said. “She is just very naturally talented, she puts in so much work, and it shows. She started wrestling way later in life than I did, and she has jumped so many levels.

“She has always motivated me, and she’s been so supportive. I think that she is one of the reasons that I am where I am in wrestling, and I look up to her a lot.”

Favara also has a personal wrestling coach, Nestor Varona, who taught her the sport during her high school days in Florida and continues to coach her to this day.

“He helped me to discover my love for the sport,” Favara said of Varona.

After Varona moved to Johnstown to take a teaching position at Bishop McCort, Favara and her mother moved to Johnstown together. Favara enrolled in high school at McCort with her mother’s permission and began competing in wrestling there before graduating in 2024.

“I knew that Bishop McCort was a faith-based school, and I knew that they had a good wrestling program,” Favara said. “But when I first arrived there, I wasn’t expecting it to be near the program that it is. It was a pleasant surprise to end up in a place like that.”

Favara is a powerful wrestler who most often produces bonus points in her matches. In her two high school seasons at McCort, Favara compiled a 32-4 record with 21 true falls and eight technical falls.

As a freshman at Lock Haven, Favara won 10 of her matches by true fall and 13 via technical fall.

Bill Bassett, who started the girls wrestling program at McCort and has been the coach of the school’s nationally-acclaimed boys wrestling program for the past two seasons, coached Favara during her high school days at McCort.

“She’s very talented, she wrestles in the upper weights, and she can move very well for being in the upper weights as a girl,” Bassett said. “She’s very athletic.”

Favara thanked her parents — Christine Hescox and Michael Favara — for their unwavering support of her wrestling pursuits, and she hopes to continue her impressive success at Grand Valley, where she will major in exercise science with career aspirations of becoming a professional exercise trainer.

Alyssa Favara said that she also hopes to someday pay her experience in wrestling forward, and to teach the sport to younger, upcoming wrestlers.

“I want to go as far as I can in wrestling, and I would have never made it as far as I have in this sport without the help and support of my parents, who have sacrificed so much for me,”Alyssa Favara said. “Obviously my goal is to make it to the Olympics, and I want to make the World Team and win World Championships. More than that, when I can no longer physically compete, I still want to stay involved in wrestling as a coach.

“I want to coach young girls and young women, just as I was coached, in order to continue building this love for this sport that is so rewarding. I want to help to continue the growth of this sport for years and years to come.”