ETHS Senior Tiaira Scott Pins Boys, Wins Wrestling Championships

During a wrestling practice at Evanston Township High School last week, senior Tiaira Scott lunges toward a freshman boy, hooks her arms around his legs and throws him to the mat in the blink of an eye.

Then she lets out a giggle.

Scott is the only girl on the wrestling team, and also one of its most accomplished members. She’s a three-time Illinois state wrestling champion and recently won a national championship in girls folk style wrestling—the format recognized by the Illinois State High School Association.

This July, Scott is heading to North Dakota to compete for the national championship in freestyle wrestling, the format used in the Olympics. Her sophomore year, Scott took fourth at the same competition, and last year, she came in second.

“It was a disappointing second,” says Coach Rudy Salinas. “She really should have won.”

While the competition will be tough, Scott says she feels ready.

“Everyone’s going hard because they want to be first,” says Scott, who recently turned 18. “I feel confident because I’ve been close to it for the past few years and I think it’s time this year that I should win it.”

Joining the Team Meant Convincing Her Mom

Scott joined the wrestling team her freshman year of high school, in part because her doctor told her she was borderline diabetic and needed to lose weight. Since then, she’s dropped approximately 70 pounds and now wrestles in the 198-pound weight class.

In elementary school at Walker School and then at Chute Middle School, Scott played basketball. But she says she came to high school wanting to change things up.

“At first I wanted to do boxing, but there was no team here, so I decided to do wrestling,” says Scott, who has a younger brother and sister. She was drawn to wrestling, in part because of the one-on-one nature of the sport.

“Plus, anything could happen,” she adds. “You could be losing and then out of nowhere you could do a move and you’re winning."

Before she could join the team, however, she had to convince her mom, who was worried that her daughter might be seriously injured. Scott wrote her mom letters over and over, begging for permission, until she finally changed her mind, persuaded by her daughter’s conviction.  At the time, there were three other girls on the team, although now Scott is the only one.

During her freshman year, Scott says she often wanted to give up. Running and conditioning left her exhausted day after day, and she kept getting beat by fellow teammate Janelle Jones, who was No. 1 in the nation her junior year.

“I used to cry every day after practice,” Scott admits.

But every day she felt like she got a little bit better.

“I kept pushing myself,’’ she says. “Just keep going and don’t give up and make sure you have people surrounding you who support you.”

What Makes Tiaira Scott Unique    

Salinas says Scott’s exceptional work ethic is what helped her succeed in a male-dominated sport. While she wrestles against girls at state and national competitions, she spends the majority of her time wrestling boys in practice or at smaller matches.

“She’s got a fighting spirit,” he says. “She doesn’t like to lose.” 
 
Salinas has coached at Evanston Township High School for ten years, but has been coaching wrestling or football for about 20 years. In that time, he says, he’s coached dozens of girls. But Scott is unique.  

“I’ve had tough girls before, I’ve had gifted girls, athletic girls,” he says. “She’s driven to get better.”

At one Thanksgiving tournament, for example, the Wildkits went into competition without a seasoned heavyweight . Despite the fact that she weighed about 50 pounds less than the teenage boy competitors in that class, Scott decided she wanted to compete in the division. She lost two matches and won two matches, finishing fourth, Salinas says.

During her sophomore year, Scott won the state tournament in the 220-pound class and went on to nationals to compete as part of Team Illinois, a group of the best girls in the state. When she arrived, she learned that her weight class had been discontinued. In order to wrestle at 198, the next lowest class, she would have to lose twelve pounds in three days.

“As fatigued as she was, she met the challenge,” Salinas says, noting that it’s significantly harder for a woman to drop weight quickly when compared to a man.

Wrestling With the Boys  

Aside from the separate locker rooms, everything is the same for boys and girls on Salinas’ team.

“One of the first thing I tell my ladies is, ‘I coach wrestling, I don’t coach girls, and there’s only one way to coach it,” he says. “[Tiaira] completely bought in.”

Although Scott and her teammates have gotten used to having a girl on the squad, her competitors aren’t always so accepting. The percentage of female high school wrestlers is probably in the single digits, Salinas says, and boys will occasionally forfeit a match with Scott. They’re afraid to get beat by a girl in front of their teammates, he says.

At one tournament, Scott had just wrestled a boy onto his back when time ran out. She lost the match 10-7, but the fact that she had pinned the boy, even temporarily, was so humiliating that he did not come back for the second day of the tournament.

“That boy, even though he was good, he was ridiculed and badgered by his peers,” Salinas says. “It’s tough to deal with that.”

While Scott has learned not to take it personally, it’s still disappointing when a competitor forfeits.

“I get pumped and I’m ready to wrestle,” she says. “When I find out at the last minute that I’m not wrestling, I get very mad.”

Sights Set On College Wrestling

Scott is currently trying to decide between several colleges, where she plans to join a wrestling team. Her first pick is King College in Bristol, TN, because she likes the coaches she has met and knows some of the team members.

She’s considering a major in psychology, and says she’d probably like to get a job relating to psychology, perhaps as a social worker dealing with victims of domestic violence.  

“I like working with kids, and I like working with the mind,” Scott says. 
 
Between now and her first day of the college wrestling season, however, she’s focused on one goal: winning the national championship this July.   

That means doing conditioning work like running every day, and wrestling with the team on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  It also means mental preparation, right up until the day of competition.

Before the match, she’ll eat honey, for instant energy, and carrots dipped in mustard, a personal favorite. She’ll plug in her iPod and listen to hip-hop, rap or R&B, especially her favorite pump-up song, “Colors” by Yo Gotti.

She might stare at her opponent and imagine what moves she’s going to do on her. 
 
“If you think you’re going to lose, you’re going to lose,” says Scott. “You have to be prepared and strong-minded.”