by Andrew Woerz

After an exhausting, busy, and impressive season, wrestler Savannah Witt still had a tiring schedule ahead of her, most recently being on Team USA, representing our country in Estonia. Savannah Witt, junior, has participated in wrestling ever since the beginning of her school career. Since then, she has participated every year in the sport and has continued to grow and reach new opportunities. “I started wrestling because our football team didn’t have enough people to fill the roster in kindergarten,” she explained. “I made friends from the football team who then went into wrestling, so I did too.” As the years went by, she spent more and more time in the Palisades High School Wrestling Room to continue to train and become a better athlete. 

When the school season of wrestling ended, Witt continued to practice hard for a variety of tournaments. It wasn’t until a Team USA coach asked Witt if she would be interested in participating in a world tournament for girls wrestling. Witt jumped at the opportunity, hoping this would be the start of her next big step in wrestling. “This tournament was simply made to be a learning experience for me in hopes I get to represent the U.S. in other tournaments sometime,” she said. 

The tournament was held in Tallinn, Estonia, and included freestyle and greco-roman style wrestling. The tournament is the biggest wrestling tournament in Europe and holds 2,335 wrestlers representing 38 countries from around the world. Although Witt hadn’t practiced freestyle as much as she liked to, she was still optimistic. She ” hardly had time to prepare for this tournament because it is freestyle and I had just come from my wrestling season from the school, which was folkstyle.” 

After preparing herself mentally, Witt came out with a great performance from the tournament. She participated in several matches with one of her favorite highlights of her matches “Coming back and beating a girl I lost to previously in the week during the Europe vs. United States dual 5.” Witt represented USA very well by winning 3 matches and overall coming in third place for her weight class. Witt stated that she had a fun time and a great learning experience and hopes to wrestle for USA again in the future.

Witt hopes to have more opportunities like this and hopes to continue to grow the sport of girls wrestling not just at Palisades High School, but to grow it nationwide as well. She is always training and practicing to get better and hopes that more girls will continue to try out for the team next season. When we asked her what she would say to girls (and anyone in general) who are thinking of being a part of the sport, she summed it up by saying, “Join the sport 100%. No other sport will teach you the life lessons wrestling does. It’s disciplined because of the whole having to make weight thing, as well as it teaches you accountability because it’s just you and someone else on the mat, your performance can’t be blamed on anyone but you. A lot of people say once you wrestle everything else becomes easier and it’s definitely true. A lot of life lessons come out of it so definitely join. It’s really fun!” 

We look forward to seeing all the accomplishments Savannah makes in the future! and congratulations to Savannah for representing our country!

(Images courtesy of Savannah Witt)