MAXFIELD, Maine — Sophia Carson can’t quite pinpoint the root of her love of wrestling, but the 16-year-old rising senior from Penobscot Valley High School in Howland has competed in the sport since the second grade and has no intention of stopping any time soon.
“I’ve just been doing it for so long,” she said. “I like the intensity of it, and I’ve worked at it so much that it’s become part of me.”
Carson’s relationship with the sport has intensified this year.
Last winter, she placed third in the Class C state championship meet at 132 pounds for coach Chris Sirois’ Howlers.
Carson also was a team captain for the second straight year and winner of her team’s coaches’ award for the third consecutive season, despite being the lone girl on the roster and having nearly all her matches against male opposition.
“Every once in a while there’s a couple of girls at a meet,” Carson, who also plays soccer for PVHS, said. “I guess wrestling guys for so long gives me a leg up on some of the girls when I wrestle them because it’s helped me build up strength, but it is a bit different.”
Carson has used that advantage more frequently since joining the southern Maine-based Maine Trappers women’s wrestling team and competing in several women-only tournaments this spring.
That team, coached by Joe Schreiber of Lisbon, has 13 members in its inaugural year, but team leader and USA Wrestling-Maine director Alan Kinerson anticipates having as many as 40 women on the Trappers’ women’s roster next season.
“This is a chance for the girls to compete against their own and excel,” Kinerson said. “I keep telling Sophia and the other girls on the team we have now that you’re the pioneers; you’re the ones opening the door for other women and that the sport’s going to grow like crazy because of what you’re doing and what you’re representing.”
While Carson isn’t able to attend a lot of the Trappers’ practices because of the travel demands, she already has experienced considerable success.
She won her weight class at the Maine Women’s State Championships and placed second at the New England Women’s Championships in Springfield, Massachusetts.
That was followed by a third-place finish at the Beat The Streets tournament in Bronx, New York, before Carson earned All-American honors in mid-May with a sixth-place effort at the Body Bar National Wrestling Championships in Irving, Texas.
“It was pretty awesome to go and see how many other girls are actually competing,” Carson said of the Texas competition. “There were 18 or 20 girls in just my weight class.”
Carson lost her first match at the Body Bar Nationals, then rebounded with five consecutive victories to earn a berth in the fifth-place match.
“I was pretty dead by the end of it,” she said. “But it was great to come from such a small town up north in Maine and go somewhere and make an impact and show what I can do. It was pretty cool.”
That success has come barely months after Carson was introduced to freestyle wrestling, the type preferred in most off-season competitions as well as at the collegiate level. Freestyle wrestling is similar to the folkstyle wrestling used during the high school season but relies more on upper-body strength.
“Most wrestlers go in with their head down a lot in folkstyle as they are diving for legs, but with freestyle Sophia had to learn to keep her head up and keep her stance strong so she could attack without getting her trunk put down to the mat because her head was too low,” Kinerson said.
“There’s also a lot of hand fighting in freestyle, not so much hand fighting but a lot of heavy hands on the head. She’s learned to hand fight very, very well. That’s one of the keys to any style of wrestling, but that’s one of the biggest improvements she’s made.”
Carson and two of her Maine Trappers teammates — Hilary Merrifield of Camden Hills Regional High School in Rockport and Rayanne Leach of Medomak Valley High School of Waldoboro — are preparing for their biggest meet of the year, the Asics-Vaughan Freestyle National Championships slated for July 17 to July 26 at the Fargodome on the campus of North Dakota State University.
Already described as the largest Olympic-style wrestling tournament in the world and growing amid a surge of popularity for competitive wrestling among women nationally, the freestyle nationals will draw thousands of the top wrestlers in the country — with the top eight in each weight class and age group earning All-American honors.
“I think Sophia has a great chance of becoming an All-American in freestyle at Fargo,” Kinerson said. “She has a great opportunity to do some big things out there.”
The Fargo tournament also will attract Division I college coaches from around the country.
“Freestyle women’s wrestling is the fastest growing college sport there is right now,” Kinerson said. “There are a lot of schools giving out scholarships for it. It’s increasing by big, big numbers and there’s a lot of opportunity for the girls right now because the sport is growing so quickly and there’s not that many women competing in it yet.”
Carson was approached by at least one college coach while competing in Texas, and she hopes to attract more recruiting attention in Fargo.
“It’s a good chance to get some college exposure,” she said. “I want to wrestle as long as I can.”
Carson is raising money to defray the estimated $1,800 required to make the Fargo trip through gofundme. Her link is gofundme.com/sophiacarson. Donations also may be mailed directly to Carson at 505 Bunker Hill Road, Maxfield, ME 04453.
