LITITZ -- Olympic bronze medalist Sarah Hildebrandt pulled back the curtain on the raw moments that followed a crushing semifinal loss in Tokyo. She was moved to tears as she explained the role her teammates played in bringing her back from a loss where she held a 7-1 lead halfway through her 50-kilogram semifinal against China’s Yanan Sun.
Hildebrandt also led Sun, 7-6, with 10 seconds remaining, but surrendered a late four-point takedown and lost by a 10-7 final. Just like that, in a matter of seconds, Hildebrandt’s years of training and a long and winding journey toward a gold medal slipped away.
She minced no words on Monday describing the way that loss impacted her and how her teammates lifted her up when she needed them most. Hildebrandt found a way to rebound and win bronze the very next day.
“It was very traumatic for me,” Hildebrandt said of the semifinal loss. “It was really hard. I did not sleep an hour, a minute, that night before the bronze medal match the next day. Somebody was at my hotel door room on this every hour of the night, sometimes multiple hours of the night, just checking in on me.
“These girls had just competed themselves. They were going through their own things. It was the middle of the night. ... Just to be there not even to say a word, just to hold me. It just meant so much to me, and I think just to have this family carry you through those moments, it’s been something so special.”
That moment was one of many raw experiences shared by Hildebrandt and fellow Olympic medalists Adeline Gray, Tamyra Mensah-Stock and Helen Maroulis in a Monday morning panel discussion at a Wrestlers In Business Network event at the Bent Creek Country Club in Lititz.
All four women were honest about their journeys and accessible to a sold-out event that included coaches, young wrestlers and a host of others in the wrestling community. National team coach Terry Steiner and former Greco-Roman gold medalist and coach Steve Fraser were among the other featured guests.
Mensah-Stock was the women’s team’s only gold medalist. She also became a rock star in Tokyo with her heart gestures and relentless positivity that went viral and landed her on morning talk shows. For girls or boys interested in wrestling, Mensah-Stock’s personality took some of the intimidating edge off the sport.
Mensah-Stock was unafraid to admit that she was bullied in her past and that she found acceptance and purpose through wrestling. As a 12-year veteran who got her start at 15, she’s a relative newcomer to the sport next to Maroullis and Gray, but her talent level and star power are both very real.
“I started in track and field, and I was bullied,” Mensah-Stock said. “The camaraderie there wasn’t the best. It was a bunch of high-strung women who didn’t treat me like I belonged, and it was difficult but I still had fun because ain’t nobody going to dim my light.
“I managed through it, then my twin got me into wrestling. The camaraderie from the get-go was incredible. I don’t understand how this sport can be such an incredibly tough sport and still have such friendly people.”
Bronze medalist Maroulis recalled parts of her 22 years in wrestling where acceptance wasn’t always the norm. She also looked back at her preparations for the Olympics and world championships, which were marked by injuries, losses and self-doubt.
Maroulis shared those feelings and said she used them to find her purpose and self-belief again. She said she has learned to embrace and confront those doubts.
“For me, it was just training to believe in myself again, even when everything around me and all my results so far had kind of confirmed that maybe I wouldn’t do it,” Maroulis said.
She added: “I allow any emotion to come up. ... Then, instead of these big fears I don’t want to become a reality, because I acknowledged it, it’s almost like I make peace with it and leave it in the past.”
Gray is a six-time world champion, a silver medalist in the Tokyo Olympics and one of the most decorated wrestlers in United States history. She is a leader for the tight-knit U.S. team in a unique struggle through COVID and threats to all of their livelihood with lockdowns and canceled tournaments.
Gray also touched briefly on life as a wife to her husband, Damaris Sanders, and drew one of the biggest laughs of the morning when she said she has a separate sports psychologist to “b---h about my husband.” That quip was a true “Olympians are just like us” moment, but so were Gray’s fears about a COVID world.
“I was looking at everyone, and was like, ‘This is going to be the whole year. We need to prepare ourselves to be flexible. We need to use the skill sets that we have learned in wrestling and apply them right now in this moment,’” Gray said.
For a sport with accessibility issues -- especially in the 17 states (including Pennsylvania) that have not yet sanctioned girls wrestling at the high school level -- the opposite is true of the role models at the top of women’s wrestling.
All four Olympians spoke of challenges on Monday, which resonated with young wrestlers who were in attendance. The women also stressed the importance fundamentals and showed the positivity and joy in wrestling that made the team so appealing in Tokyo.
Wyoming Seminary had a small group of wrestlers who made the two-hour drive to Lititz for the event, including Ava Bayless, the No. 4 wrestler in the country, and Korina Blades, a 2021 junior world bronze medalist.
“We had to wake up at 4 in the morning to be here,” Blades said. “Just learning what they go through, their mindset and what they think about, I realized they’re not much different from us. They’re very successful and they’re ahead of us in their careers, but they’re normal people who work just as hard and make sacrifices like everyone else. It was really inspiring.”
Inspiring and real, says Brazel Marquez, a California native who is now the first head coach at Alvernia University in Reading. The Wolves are building toward their first official season in 2022-’23.
Marquez said she has been wrestling since she was a toddler and has come to call all four Olympic medalists her friends. She says the effect their successes can have on young wrestlers is apparent, but not as important as their willingness to discuss their own struggles.
“It’s really important for people to vouch that and voice those concerns and struggles because everybody goes through it,” Marquez said. “I feel like wrestlers have this mentality like, ‘We’re too tough. We can handle anything. We don’t have to voice these things.’
“It’s good, especially for these girls to have such a large platform to voice those things and be humble about these things. For these younger girls to hear that and can be like, ‘OK, I can still overcome while I’m feeling these things’ is important to hear and to know.”
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