Pinning perfection

Brittany Marshall has four matches left in her high school career on February 20th and 21st in a 16-girl bracket to win the honor of being crowned state champion in the 185-lb. weight class.

The motivational video she’s watched at least 50 times raises her spirit and calms her nerves.

“I got this,” she whispers under her breath.

And boy, does she got this.

Her first match, she gets a pin in 61 seconds. Second match with eight girls remaining, another pin, now in 56 seconds. Third match with four competitors still standing, a third pin in 3:03. Fourth and final match with only her and her opponent left for the top spot, for the final time that day she takes opponent down to mat, spins on top to her prey’s back. “TWO POINTS!” the referee shouts. Brittany begins her pinning combination, slowly putting her unfortunate rival on to her back. One second down, two seconds down, three seconds and then…BAM!

The ref’s hand slaps the mat. In her final high school match, she gets the pin in 1:30. With that, Marshall wins her second state championship in two years.

Marshall has been wrestling for all four years she’s been in high school and she has the hardware to prove it. She’s managed to win every district and regional tournament she competed in and has gone to state four times and pulled two championships from those experiences. With all the success she’s found over the year, one could almost say she was destined for it.

“The coach from my freshman year, he came and he brought the girls from that year and he was trying to get us all to wrestle,” Marshall said. “And my coach from 8th grade actually told me to try it, and then I beat the varsity captain, so I decided that I would do it that year.”

Four trips to state means four “State” hoodies. They seem to be rather run-of-the-mill pieces of cloth, having only a solid color and the word “State” written in bold letters across the chest. However, once wrestlers learn that only those wrestlers that have earned a spot at the state tournament get to wear one, seeing someone who earned a hoodie as their opponent fills them with dread. But to someone with three of them in her closet entering her senior season, Marshall is hardly intimidated by a girl warming up in one.

“A ‘State’ hoodie means nothing,” Marshall said. “I’ve been around that attitude for so long, the hoodie means nothing if you can’t back it up. Alternates get state hoodies. If I haven’t wrestled you, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Marshall had a perfect season run heading into the state tournament. This would have been hard enough to undertake at the 165 weight class that she won the state title the previous year, but Brittany moved up to the 185 weight class over the summer. Because she had moved up a weight class that was 20 pounds heavier, she had to switch up her style to continue her success.

“I took a lot of shots last year,” Marshall said.

A shot is a type of takedown where one wrestler makes an explosive movement where they go now to one knee and wrap their arms around their opponents’ legs in order to topple them and gain control quickly.

The defense to this attack is a sprawl where the defender throws their legs back and have their torso on the attackers back.

“One of my favorite moves was my blast double [shot] because I had so much power behind it,” Marshall said. “This year, I think I did at state. I didn’t do it anywhere else because whenever I was wrestling, they were so much bigger than I was. I had to modify a couple of my moves, starting with the throws.”

With her new arsenal of throws and upper body moves at her disposal, Marshall continued to pound her opponents into the mats like she had for the past three years, but something changed. She was winning as she did before, but then she never lost. She went 8-0, 20-0, 34-0, 40-0, and and at the end her final match at state, she ended the season a perfect 49-0.

However, even with all this and offers to colleges that she’s tightlipped about, Marshall is still humble and looking at her season critically.

“It was a heck of a season,” Marshall said. “I found out, even on my worst days, I can still perform the task at hand. I figured out who I was this season.”