Crown Point freshman Ava Strayer has been compiling a long list of goals.
Even after checking off a significant one Friday night, Strayer is focused on what’s ahead.
“It’s always been on my bucket list to win a state championship,” she said. “This is great. But I also want to do higher things — maybe even win a national championship.”
Strayer, part of a family of wrestlers, is beginning to build her own legacy after winning the state title in the 125-pound weight class in Indianapolis during the Indiana High School Athletic Association’s inaugural state meet for the girls sport.
Strayer is one of three state champions from Northwest Indiana. She joins Merrillville senior Joy Cantu, whose “goal was to be dominant” and who won at 110, and Highland junior Aleksandra Bastaic, who won at 145.
Cantu’s sister Julianne, a freshman, was the runner-up at 130 and helped Merrillville finish second as a team. Portage junior Madisyn Mikels also was a runner-up at 100.
Strayer (35-0) won all four of her matches at state with a first-period pin and chalked up her success to an aggressive approach that carried her through the season.
“I finally started taking risks with my shots to open up my offense more,” she said. “That’s definitely going to help in the offseason when I go to these national tournaments.”
Strayer’s future could include national tournaments in college after the NCAA added women’s wrestling as an official championship sport on the same day as the IHSAA’s first state meet. That news made Strayer’s coach, her father, Doug, smile widely.
“She’s wrestling at the perfect time,” he said.
Doug Strayer, a 1991 Hobart graduate, was a two-time semistate qualifier in wrestling, and Ava Strayer’s twin brother, Colin, is ranked No. 6 at 113 pounds by IndianaMat. Ava Strayer’s initial interest in wrestling came from spending hours in the crowd at her brother’s tournaments.
“I’d see all of these girls wrestling,” she said. “I thought it was really cool and that I wanted to try it.”
Doug Strayer was not as enthusiastic about that idea, though.
“She begged me for about two years to let her wrestle,” he said. “At the time, there were girls who wrestled, but not a lot. I thought she just wanted to jump on board with her brother.”
Ava Strayer found support from her brother.
“She started paying attention more at tournaments, trying to understand what was going on and learning all of the rules,” Colin Strayer said. “I saw that she genuinely looked like she wanted to wrestle, and I didn’t think it would hurt to let her try.”
The turning point came in 2019, when Ava Strayer traveled with her father to watch 2021 Crown Point graduate Alexie Westfall win a title at the Indiana High School Girls Wrestling Coaches Association’s state meet — the tournament that preceded the IHSAA’s adoption of the sport.
“It happened the next morning,” Doug Strayer said. “She came to me and said that we pulled her out of her school, made her drive two hours there and back to watch Alexie wrestle, but I still wouldn’t let her wrestle. She broke me. And she stuck with it the first year to prove me wrong.”
Ava Strayer had some doubts along the way.
“There was definitely a yearlong thought of, ‘Can I do this?’” she said. “But I wanted to prove them wrong, that I could do it, and then I started to fall in love with it.”
Ava Strayer hasn’t stopped wrestling since then. The next item on her list is USA Wrestling’s women’s national championships and world team trials in Spokane in April.
Doug Strayer said he expects her to approach that event like she has met any other challenge.
“That girl came out of the womb wanting to win life,” Doug Strayer said. “She’s just always wanted to succeed, and she can’t stand it when someone’s better than her. She works very hard to stay on top.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter.
