Lady Wildcats have one goal in mind today, Thursday
The Cassville girls wrestling team members wrote down their goals at the beginning of the season, and every Lady Wildcat wrote the same thing — win a state championship.
Cassville has seen state-level success in the past, and the Lady Wildcats are more primed than ever to accomplish the trophy-lifting task with Annie Moore, Kailey Artherton, Hailey Roark, Faith James and Taylor Glidewell.
Nathan Fortner, Cassville wrestling coach, said the transition from one class to two for girls is also helping grease the wheels.
“Since it’s gone to two classes, we’ve talked about winning it quite a bit, and they know they have a pretty good shot,” Fortner said. “But, it will be pretty tight between us, Brookfield and Holden.”
Those two schools are bringing seven wrestlers each, compared to Cassville’s five, but Fortner said at this level, quantity tends to fall victim to quality.
“Our of our five, we should have almost all in the top three, and some firsts,” Fortner said. “Most of Brookfield’s and Holden’s wrestlers will not finish that high.”
The Lady Wildcats were Big 8 runner-up to Marshfield, and they beat the Lady Bluejays in districts, but fell again to second place behind Holden. Brookfield finished Class 1, District 2 champion.
“Even though we got second in conference and district, I still think we have a really good shot to win state,” Fortner said. “We may not have the numbers, but this really shows the quality of our wrestlers.”
Moore, a 115-pound senior, is the most experienced Lady Wildcat, having won a state title in 2021 and finishing as runner-up in 2022. James, a 130-pound junior, is the only other on the roster with a state medal, taking sixth place in 2022 and qualifying in 2021. Artherton, a senior at 120 pounds, qualified for state last year but suffered a knee injury that knocked her out of medal contention. She also qualified in 2021.
Roark, a junior at 140 pounds, just missed state qualification last year but attended the year prior. Glidewell will be attending her first state tournament this year. In the lead-up to state, Fortner said repetition and tunnel vision are the words of the week.
“We are just trying to be consistent,” he said. “If this is what we want to do, we know what it takes. I’ve been part of two state championship teams, and hard work beats talent at the state level. We are tweaking little things here and there, and we want to have confidence and be mentally ready.
“A lot goes on in high school kids’ minds, and our coaching staff does a great job keeping us focused on the next match.
Fortner said when it comes down to it, placement matches and bonus points will determine if Cassville will reign supreme.
“We’ve got to get high up on the podium, and we have to get bonus points with falls, major decisions and technical falls,” he said. “We don’t have the numbers, but we can put our opponents on their backs and pin them. We’ve preached all year the objective of wrestling is to put the opponent away, and they’ve done a pretty good job of that.”
Each of the Lady Wildcats is riding a pin streak into the tournament. While Glidewell has just the pin from her third-place match at districts, Moore, Artherton, James and Roark have each pinned their way through the conference and district tournaments.
The 2023 Wrestling championships begin today (Wednesday) and continue through Thursday evening at Mizzou Arena in Columbia. Follow the squad online at www.
cassville-democrat.com/ category/sports or on the Cassville Democrat Facebook and Twitter pages.
