For five weeks in the middle of the regular season, Lockport sophomore Claudia Heeney stayed off the wrestling mat, letting her broken right thumb begin to heal.
Heeney was eager to get back to competition, but she had some doubts about whether she could achieve her ultimate goal.
“It was in the back of my head like, ‘Hey, I can be a state champ,’” Heeney said. “But when I was sitting out, it was like, ‘It might not happen this year.’
“I didn’t think about it too much, but once I came back, I knew I had to do this.”
And Heeney did what she set out to do. After losing in the state championship match as a freshman, she won the 130-pound state title with a 4-2 decision over Collinsville’s Taylor Dawson.
It was a triumphant moment for Heeney, the 2023-24 Daily Southtown Girls Wrestler of the Year. And it was even sweeter because of the adversity she overcame with the injury.
“It definitely makes it more special,” Heeney said. “I think I’ve learned a lot about myself this year.”
Heeney also helped the Porters become one of the first three girls wrestling teams in Illinois to win a state trophy.
For the first time, the Illinois High School Association gave team awards for the sport based on scoring at the individual state meet. Lockport finished as the runner-up.
“It’s super exciting,” Heeney said. “We have a hard-working room. Everyone’s around to push each other to get better. Getting that trophy means a lot.”
Heeney and fellow state champion Morgan Turner, also a sophomore, led the Porters’ charge up the team leaderboard.
“It’s amazing,” Lockport coach Nate Roth said of the team finish. “I can’t even believe it. It’s so cool. At the beginning of the season, that wasn’t really on the radar. It was just, let’s get better, have fun and wrestle.
“Having this trophy in my hand is very surreal. Did this even happen? Is it a dream? I don’t know. The girls wrestled awesome. We had a great season. It was so much fun.”
It wasn’t an easy season, though, for Heeney.
As a freshman last winter, she steamrolled through the competition, winning the first 42 matches before suffering her lone loss to Freeport’s Cadence Diduch in the 125-pound state championship match. This season, Diduch became a three-time state champion.
Heeney quickly put that setback behind her.
“I didn’t take my loss that hard last year,” Heeney said. “I shed a few tears and moved on. We had bigger things to take care of.”
After facing little adversity until the end of her freshman season, Heeney dealt with plenty this time around. She broke her thumb in May but continued to wrestle until shutting it down in December following the Donnybrook Tournament in Iowa, where she suffered her only loss.
Returning just before the postseason, Heeney had given her thumb time to heal but still wrestled with her right hand heavily wrapped.
“Once the adrenaline gets going, it doesn’t really bother me,” she said.
Lockport’s Claudia Heeney, right, wrestles against Freeport’s Cadence Diduch in the 125-pound championship match of the girls wrestling state meet at Grossinger Motors Arena in Bloomington on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023. (Vincent D. Johnson / Daily Southtown)
After having so much success last season, Heeney focused on diversifying her wrestling to be ready when things go wrong.
“She dominates so much that a lot of times it’s like ‘I’m going to do this and it’s going to work,’ and it always works,” Roth said. “There are not a lot of times where she’s forced to do something different. So, she wanted to try some new stuff so she could be ready for when that does happen.”
It happened during the state championship match as Heeney took on Dawson, who entered with a 47-0 record. Heeney won 4-2, scoring all her points on reversals.
“It felt really good winning that way because I’ve been working on bottom ever since I was little and I was never good at it,” Heeney said. “It feels amazing to be a state champ.”
