Wrestling: Squires pins down state folkstyle championship

Wrestling wasn’t on Kelsey Squires’ radar screen until she entered eighth grade and had a few friends on the Riverhead Middle School wrestling team. One of those wrestling friends was another girl, Mattingly Farruggia.

So, what the heck? Squires decided to go out for the team.

“I did it honestly as a joke at first and it somehow turned into this,” she said.

Four years later, it’s far from a laughing matter. This is serious business for Squires, who last summer fell one win shy of gaining All-American status, earlier this month earned a state championship and has committed to wrestle for the Elmira College (N.Y.) women’s team.

Squires has come a long way since that eighth-grade season. After sitting out her freshman season, as a sophomore she was one of two girls on the Riverhead High School varsity wrestling team along with Katie Moore. Moore, who graduated in 2020, became the first Riverhead girl to wrestle for the varsity Blue Waves in 2017.

Then came a big change for Squires. Riverhead coach Jake Benedetto introduced Squires to his wife, Amber Atkins, the Bay Shore girls wrestling coach (“She’s been my rock for two years now,” said Squires). Since Riverhead doesn’t have a girls wrestling team, Squires was allowed for the past two years to wrestle for Bay Shore, which Benedetto said has the only girls wrestling team on Long Island. In addition, Squires has wrestled for the Team Alpha Girls Wrestling Club for two years.

“Wrestling against girls has honestly changed my life because wrestling with the boys, I really had no chance and I didn’t think I was going to get anywhere with it,” she said, “but once I started wrestling with the girls, I was winning matches and I was having more fun. If I never got into women’s wrestling, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Squires was a force at the New York State Girls Folkstyle Championships March 5 in Troy, taking first place in the 215-pound weight class. It was the first tournament title the senior did not receive by default.

Squires, representing Team Alpha, won all five of her matches by pins in a total time of 12 minutes, 20 seconds, with one of them coming in 21 seconds. In addition to recording the most pins in the least time, she brought Alpha 26 points, tying Spartan Combat RTC’s Emily Sindoni for the tournament lead.

“I was really proud of myself,” Squires said. “I went in with a hundred-percent mindset, thinking that I was going to win.”

Squires’ biggest achievement to date in wrestling was her performance in the USA Wrestling Junior National Championships last summer in Fargo, N.D., where she won her first three bouts before losing the fourth and falling one win shy of All-American status in freestyle at 200 pounds.

“I was up by eight points,” she recalled. “I needed two more points and I got stuck in a headlock and thrown on my back and got pinned.”

Squires said it was a few weeks later when she saw the final national rankings released and she was 24th on the list.

That served as both encouragement and inspiration to her. She will return to the Fargodome, the indoor arena where the national tournament is held in Fargo, this July in the hope of earning a place among the top eight on the podium and the All-American honor that goes with that. “I want to work harder and train harder and hopefully it will get me farther,” she said.

The event at the Fargodome is a spectacle to behold, she said. “It’s a whole new world,” she said. “It’s like you go there for a one-and-a-half-week training camp and then you’re competing on the biggest stage that you’ll ever compete in in high school sports. It’s in a massive room with 24 mats and if you’ve never wrestled [in] Fargo before, you’ve never wrestled like anything like that before.”

Squires has learned that 100% commitment is a requirement in wrestling. Half-measures aren’t going to cut it. She also appreciates the physicality and mental toughness the sport demands.

“If something goes wrong, there’s no one else to blame,” she said. “It’s all on you. It’s not only draining on your body, but you have to keep yourself going. The second your body gives up, you’re done.”

Clearly, Squires isn’t close to be being done. This interesting ride of hers continues, “and I would not trade it for anything.”