In an effort to continue building momentum around the girls’ varsity wrestling program at Midlakes High School, the team has found a way to make history. Again.

Midlakes Athletics and the girls wrestling program will host the first-ever all-girls individual tournament contested at Midlakes High School. The Frosty Freestyle Festival is scheduled for December 28; weigh-ins will be open starting at 7:30 am and the matches will start at 9:30 am.

The tournament will use four mats between the high school and middle school gymnasiums, with the finals scheduled for the main mat in the high school. A full card of 13 weight classes are expected to be action.

“I’m excited. Who isn’t?,” quipped sophomore Abbigail Hargarther, a five-year Midlakes grappler. “This is such a great opportunity, and the first full-freestyle tournament here.”

Midlakes girls wrestling continues to check off historical milestones. In 2023, Orianna Carrasquel (Class of ’24), Olivia Miles (Class of ’24) and Abbigail Hargarther qualified for the first all-female State Tournament in Syracuse. In January '24, Midlakes hosted their first all-female dual meet against Section III Fulton High School. A few weeks after, Midlakes was a top performer at the annual Bradshaw Tournament in Canandaigua. There was no formal champion recognized in Section V last season. However, Hargarther, Carrasquel and Miles qualified for their second all-female State Tournament.

Just a few weeks back, Midlakes took the team championship at Penfield’s Hunter-Leone Tournament. This year, there are enough teams in Section V to crown a Sectional Champion in girls’ wrestling. Hopefully, a Sectional block trophy is on the horizon.

“I think we are definitely pushing the sport and we have been trying to develop and give opportunities to girls in Section V,” said head coach Jake Taylor. “We are one of the biggest teams in Section V, and we saw this as an opportunity.”

With no other local tournaments scheduled for the weekend of December 28, trying to start the Frosty Freestyle Festival made sense. The geographic location of the Phelps-Clifton Springs School District makes the event attractive to programs in Section III, IV and VI as well.

The tournament will be contested under freestyle rules. Girls wrestling generally employs the faster, higher-scoring freestyle while most high school level wrestling – with males as the primary participants - employ folkstyle.

Hargarther will join two other Hunter-Leone class champions and eighth grade classmates Julionna Carrasquel and Lizzy Boughton in leading the charge. Despite their youth, the scope of this event is not lost on them.

“This tournament is big; it’s a lot of teams and a lot of people. I have been getting better. I want to keep my winning streak up,” said Boughton. Boughton is also a cheerleader for the school.

The tournament has drawn over 20 teams, and individual registration counts have eclipsed 200 wrestlers. Local teams include Canandaigua, Fairport, Geneva, Dundee-Penn Yan, Red Creek, Red Jacket, Wayne and Webster-Thomas.

“Hopefully this opens doors for other schools to follow. We can pave the way in Section V,” said Nick Hargarther, a volunteer assistant with Coach Taylor. Hargarther trains with MMA fighters, promotes local MMA action, and is a coach and president of the Black and Blue Wrestling Boosters and Midlakes Youth Wrestling. He also serves as the West Region Director of the New York Wrestling Association for Youth (NYWAY). He’s also the father to four daughters – Lily (Class of ’24), Deliah, Abbigail and Makenna – and a son, Nicholas, Jr., at Midlakes.

“Right now, it is hard to schedule matches. There aren’t a lot of whole lot of teams that can fill a match,” explained Taylor, noting much of the scheduling ends up with trips outside of Section V’s boundaries.

With time, being active and visible will hopefully increase what is offered within Section V, and Taylor said, in the next few years, scheduling should become easier.

“Our team, they hit the ground running. Ton of new girls, lots of returners helping to recruit,” Taylor said. “We have gotten everyone several matches now. Trying to get more girls to join. Embraced the culture and the idea of girls wrestling as a whole, great ambassadors of the sport.”

At the end of the 2023-24 season, Taylor had an active group of nine wrestlers, with five graduating: Carraquel, who now wrestles on partial scholarship to Division-II D’Youville, Miles, Laura Rugiero, Katelyn Martin and Kendall Lawson. This year’s squad includes 13 active wrestlers.

Boughton has pinned every girl she has faced this year. Hargarther is on pace to be the first female varsity wrestler in Midlakes history with 100 wins. Volleyball star Clara Bond, who studied Jiu-Jitsu outside of school, has also joined the team. There is one senior on the team this year, Leah Peck. Sophomore Olivia Thorpe skipped basketball to wrestle this season.

“I won my first match!,” Thorpe said. “I’ve played soccer, basketball. This is more mentally demanding. It might be my favorite versus the other two. It’s more fun.”

“We are making history, we want to bring girls wrestling, women’s wrestling to the front” Coach Hargarther said. “But we are also changing the mentality of all the wrestling before us.”

Hargarther explained the whole approach is different. The prevailing focus in wrestling is wins and losses; if you win, you’re a winner. If you lose, you’re a loser. Instead, Taylor and Hargarther focus on the mental side of wrestling, and draw out life-lessons from training, cultivating a confidence to excel on the mat, or at a job, or in relationships.

“You’re not defined by the result of a match. You build confidence each time out. You learn to trust that little voice in your head,” said Hargarther, pointing to the new athletes and their microgoals: get a takedown, get a reversal, score points then worry about wins.

“The girls have been good at picking up the moves and they understand them, but how do we get that attitude? That fierce competitor to dominate a match? How do we pull that out,” added Taylor. “We focus on coaching up those little pieces, set up small competitive matches in the wrestling room to get them to get that inner competitor to come out.”

“And soon, you see it… you see them start to buy in, to realize you can succeed in anything you put your heart into,” finished Hargarther. “We want them to have a strong mind and be strong mentally and physically to compete. We want to coach good people, not just good athletes.”

The competition side will be on full display at Midlakes Wrestling’s Frosty Freestyle Festival, with a scheduled start time of 9:30 am December 28 at the Midlakes High and Middle School Gyms.