Columbus East’s Eden Knight, left, and Monica McMahon have qualified to compete in Friday’s Indiana High School Wrestling Coaches Association girls state finals in Kokomo. They are pictured at Columbus East High School on Monday.
Mike Wolanin | The Republic
Eden Knight and Monica McMahon come from different levels of wrestling backgrounds, but the Columbus East juniors have earned the same destination — a trip Kokomo for Friday’s Indiana High School Wrestling Coaches Association Girls State Finals.
Knight and McMahon became the second and third girls wrestlers from East to qualify for state, and the first ones since girls wrestling has been deemed an “Emerging Sport” by the IHSAA. Emma Mensendiek qualified in 2017, the first year the IHSWCA held a girls tournament.
“I’m excited for them, and as a coach, it’s what I expected,” first-year East girls coach Lorenzo Salazar said. “These two were definitely two standout wrestlers. They’re in here every day consistently putting in the work. I never see them slacking off, and it shows on the mat when they wrestle.”
Monica, who threw the shot and discus for the track team, comes from a wrestling family. Her brother Pat graduated last year, and brother Colin is a freshman on this year’s boys team. Her twin sister Grace also wrestles for the girls team, but broke her arm and was unable to compete in the postseason.
“My whole family pretty much are wrestlers,” Monica said. “I just remember sitting outside of practice, and they’d be like, ‘Just come in and give it one try.’ It’s probably the best sport ever.”
Knight was an ice skater and ran cross-country like her older sister Laurel before giving wrestling a try this year.
“I did lifting with Grace McMahon,” Eden said. “We were lifting partners in the weights class here at East last year, and she told me to come try it out, and I came and liked it.”
But that didn’t mean she had a ton of confidence, at least at the beginning of the season.
“I thought I was going to be the worst girl in my weight class,” Knight said. “Whenever I won my first vengeance match, that’s whenever I really thought that I had a chance to do something here because I came back around and beat a girl who had already beat me before, so I was like, ‘Hey, maybe I am getting better. It gave me confidence that I was progressing.”
“I definitely had high hopes, based on Columbus East history of sending (boys wrestlers) to state,” McMahon added. “I felt pretty confident in our training program. So I thought that while we were wrestling with the boys, and that our program is different and more intense than others, I thought that I had a good shot, and I knew Eden had a good shot, too.”
Knight earned her trip to state in dramatic fashion. After winning by pin in her 145-pound opening-round match at Friday’s Mooresville Semistate, she trailed her quarterfinal, or “ticket round” match Mt. Vernon’s Ambryn Siddons before pinning her with 31 seconds remaining.
“It was great, especially since my ticket round, the last 30 seconds, I was down by one, and I just barely got a pin in the last few seconds,” Knight said. “I nearly didn’t make it. It was a lot of adrenaline.”
Knight was pinned in her semifinal before bouncing back with a decison in the third-place match.
McMahon scored a quick pin in her opening round match at 190, setting up a ticket round battle with Terre Haute North’s Sadie Osburn.
“I was pretty confident until I heard IndianaMat Gorilla radio there talking about my match,” McMahon said. “In the ticket round, I had a ranked girl, and they were like, ‘She’s ranked sixth. Monica is ranked eighth. We’re thinking Sadie is going to go ahead.’ So I just remember being so nervous for this match and thinking this might be the end of my wrestling season. I got a lot of support from all the coaches, lots of paragraph texts like, ‘You’ve got this,’ and I pinned her.”
McMahon was pinned in her semifinal, then dropped a 2-1 decision in the third-place match to finish fourth.
Three other Olympians fell in the ticket round, and another lost in the first round at semistate.
“There’s a couple things that didn’t go our way and a couple things that went our way,” Salazar said. “I think it the day would have been different, we might have been able to punch one or two other ones through, but that’s not always how things go. Unfortunately, I had one wrestler (Grace McMahon) that was injured and another one (Saige Plummer) that was on vacation the week of the regional, so they were unable to enter the state series. It was very unfortunate for them because I thought they would have punched their tickets, as well.”
Jennings County’s Sasha Hicks finished second in the semistate at 115 pounds. Hicks (23-1) is the No. 2 seed at state and will meet No. 15 Abi Bor (24-9) of Southport in the first round on Friday. The winner will face West Lafayette’s Isabel Kaplan or Fort Wayne Carroll’s Cheyanne Welch in the quarterfinals.
Eden Knight (15-7) is the No. 9 seed at 145 and will meet No. 8 Laine Peppler (17-3) of Rochester in the first round. The winner will face North Montgomery’s Haley Kunz or Highland’s Kate Robinson in the quarterfinals.
“I’m still fairly new to the game of wrestling, looking at the brackets, rankings, all that stuff,” Knight said. “I don’t even really know how all that works, but I definitely think I’ve got her in this state match.”
McMahon (12-4) is the No. 14 seed at 190 and will meet No. 3 Gabby Safeukui (15-3) of Penn (15-3) in the opening round. The winner will face Daleville’s Reagan Jackson or Beech Grove’s Liberty Reeves in the quarterfinals.
“It wouldn’t be my first upset of the season,” McMahon said. “I like to think that I’m strong, and I’ve watched her videos, and I think we’ve got this. I’m feeling pretty confident about this first match.”
“Obviously, any match at state is going to be a tough match, so it doesn’t matter who you have,” Salazar added. “Depending on the day, anybody that makes it to state could make it on the podium. It kind of depends how you show up and how you wrestle that day. As far as they go, I feel really confident with them. They show up every time, and they’ve just been consistent the whole year, and it shows when they’re on the mat.”
