On Thursday, Feb. 22, girls wrestling captain Shiella Paredes-Akimoto competed at the state championships. It was a three-day long event held at Mechanics Bank Arena in Bakersfield, California. Winners at the event moved on to a national championship competition.
Paredes-Akimoto went into the event with a strong game plan in mind: to win. She said that all of the people who have helped her improve her wrestling skills throughout high school motivated her to try her best. “It matters less to me, placing at tournaments and stuff. I want to prove it because of the people who have put so much work into me, because I know how good I am. I like winning to show the work that people have put into me is worth it,” Paredes-Akimoto explained. Head wrestling coach Benjamin Nathan, assistant coach Dashiell Allen, and Paredes-Akimoto’s mom all accompanied her to the state championships.
Even though she won her first two matches of the competition, Paredes-Akimoto didn’t feel she was wrestling as well as she could have been. “I just kind of focused on the fact that this is kind of like my last chance, so I thought about it like this is gonna be my last high school wrestling match, so let’s make the most of it,” Paredes-Akimoto recalled.
She amped up the energy during her third match on day two of the tournament, and despite having the upper hand for the majority of the match, she ended up getting pinned and being knocked out of the competition. This meant that she finished being ranked as one of the top 25 wrestlers in California. She said, “I knew logically that I could do better than what I ended up doing. But at the same time, I don’t really think that I believed fully that I would actually do that well.” Despite this, she stayed focused on her goals of wrestling in the future as best she could.
Paredes-Akimoto’s life has become centered around wrestling as she has improved in the sport. “I feel it’s giving me a lot of purpose in life,” she expressed, “because it’s the thing that I do. Every day is about wrestling for me. I work so that I can wrestle and so that I can go to certain tournaments in the offseason. I’m in independent study so that I can rest properly and can recover and have more time to work and train.”
She is also very proud of the mental fortitude the sport has given her. “It’s taught me so much about hard work and about strength. It’s a very brutal sport. Mentally it’s just so hard because it’s an individual sport, even though you’re wrestling with a team, at the end of the day, it’s all on you.” Paredes-Akimoto said.
While she plans to continue to do local wrestling, Paredes-Akimoto’s biggest plans are coming next year. “I’m moving to Japan for a year, … and I’m gonna wrestle out there,” she said. “When I get back, I also want to wrestle in college.” She was approached by college scouts at the state championships who offered her spots in college wrestling programs, she hopes to have more options when she returns from Japan.