Alaska girls wrestling pioneers celebrated at 10-year anniversary of first state championship

Michael Kimber is the director of women’s wrestling for Alaska USA Wrestling and a longtime advocate for girls wrestling in the Last Frontier.

He coached the sport at Mt. Edgecumbe for two decades and, over the years, recruited more and more girls to join the program. He eventually started looking at other states such as Hawaii and California that had girls-only division and state tournaments.

“I said, ‘There’s no reason we can’t do this,’ so for eight years in a row, I made a proposal to ASAA to have girls wrestling,” Kimber said.

His relentless efforts finally paid off in the 2014-15 season, when the first girls state tournament was held. This weekend, an event at the Alaska Airlines Center marked its 10th anniversary.

While Kimber did a lot of the legwork to get the ball rolling, he believes Alaska School Activities Association Director Billy Strickland “deserves a lot of credit” for making it come to fruition.

“He saw the future and he saw that it was a good thing for the sport and for the kids in Alaska,” Kimber said. “That was one of the first things he did when he took over as the director, to support this transition and get started on girls wrestling.”

The tournament and girls wrestling as a whole have come a long way in the decade since that first state tournament.

“Girls would mostly wrestle boys and sometimes the first girl they’d see at the state tournament — to now, where most of the girls never wrestle a boy at all anymore in Alaska, they’re only wrestling girls,” Kimber said.

Organizations such as Alaska USA Wrestling, Wrestle Like A Girl and Alaska Girls Wrestle have been integral to the growth of the sport and assisted in the celebration of the tournament.

“In terms of women’s wrestling, Alaska has always been a leader,” Kimber said. “We’re considered one of the original six states to sanction girls wrestling. We were the fifth.”

To hold the first state tournament, Kimber said they had to have a minimum of 100 girls. Even though they fell just short of that goal, at 98, Strickland stepped in again and gave them the green light anyway.

“Billy said, ‘We’re not going to let two girls (prevent) it,’ so 98 girls wrestled the first year and that was for the small schools,” Kimber said. “The big schools didn’t have enough, and then because the seasons were on opposite semesters, the small schools wrestled in the fall and the large schools wrestled in the spring.”

With a realignment and calendar changes for the high school season at all levels, girls wrestlers were able to have a unified tournament as part of the same season.

“Really, the small schools got it started and large schools pitched in, and they’re kind of the big dog right now,” Kimber said. “For a while, the small schools kind of ran the table, but the large schools are coming in and they’re spending a lot of time developing their wrestlers.”

He cited programs such as Colony, Bettye Davis East Anchorage and reigning girls team state champion Soldotna as some of the top in Alaska.

“Everybody is pitching in and it’s really growing,” Kimber said. “When (the tournament) first came, it was kind of a side show for a little bit, and then in the fourth year, they decided they were going to offer a team trophy — and that’s really what encouraged the growth a lot. Coaches realized they could win another trophy.”

Getting a separate tournament for girls was something he was invested in making happen not just as a coach, but also as a father. His daughter, Sydnee Kimber, is one of the most decorated and accomplished wrestlers to hail from Alaska.

He coached her to four straight state titles without losing a single match during high school and she went on to claim four national titles at McKendree University.

“She earned it, that’s for sure,” Kimber said. “My goal when Sydnee wrestled was to make sure nobody knew I was her dad. Everybody knew, but I didn’t try to do it any differently.”

During his time as the head coach for the Braves before there was a state girls championship, he coached several girls to top performances in the boys state tournament — including the current coach of the program, Deedee Creed.

His father was his wrestling coach in elementary school, and even back then, there were girls on the team who he encouraged to wrestle.

“I came by it honestly in really wanting to have girls wrestling,” Kimber said. “It’s something that is in my blood.”

To commemorate the 10-year anniversary, a table with portraits of the original eight state champions in girls wrestling was set up this weekend. While some, including his daughter, continued their careers in college, they’re accomplishing even more impressive feats as adults.

“Brittany Woods-Orrison went to Menlo College and was an All-American,” Kimber said. “She’s done a lot of stuff for Indigenous rights, she’s been in Vogue magazine. Kelly O’Brien from Bethel is getting ready to go to medical school. They’ve done a lot of good things and all led good lives, and I think wrestling has been an influence that has helped them do those good things.”

Those others featured were Moira Sheldon of Kotzebue, Lyric Wiggins of Mt. Edgecumbe, Heather Harrington of Homer, Johanna Bell of Scammon Bay and Kanesha Lie of Mt. Edgecumbe.

“Wrestling is the one sport that teaches kids discipline, humility, how to be successful, how to work hard, how to deal with setbacks and how to get back,” Kimber said. “It teaches resiliency, and that’s what I think those girls got from it.”

Trailblazer contributes to continued growth as a coach

Homer’s Tela O’Donnell Bacher was the first Alaskan female Olympian for wrestling, competing in Athens, Greece, at the 2004 Games — the first year women’s wrestling was added to the Olympics.

Back when she was competing at Homer High School in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the highest she ever placed at the former coed state tournament was sixth, as a senior in 2001.

She now coaches at her alma mater and is excited to see not only that girls have their own tournament, but also that the sport has grown among girls as a whole.

“I wrestled earlier in wrestling when there weren’t a lot of girls and there wasn’t a girls state championship, so girls were wrestling boys,” O’Donnell Bacher said. “You’ll get a handful of girls that will wrestle against the boys, but you’ll get hundreds of girls once you open it up to girls wrestling girls.”

Alaska has a rich tradition of producing top female wrestlers, including Michaela Hutchison of Soldotna, who in 2006 became the first girl in the country to win an individual state championship competing against boys.

“That was a product of starting wrestling early here and girls being able to wrestle against boys,” O’Donnell Bacher said. “Now we have not just a couple of good girls, you have this depth of girls that are developing. Six years ago, all of a sudden, it went from a couple good girls at the top of the weight classes to being deep.”

She believes the more girls who wrestle, the more the talent pool will begin to swell because the wealth of opportunities to hone their skills against comparable competition leads to growth and improvement.

Nearly all 50 states have sanctioned girls state tournaments, and most of those have come in the last few years.

O’Donnell Bacher was inspired to take up coaching and give back to the sport because of her deep love for it and all the values that wrestling can offer younger generations.

“Just to see the development of human beings through a sport, any sport,” she said. “Wrestling is my sport so that’s what I like, but you’re coaching kids to be good at wrestling, but you’re also coaching them to show up in life.”

Because of all the support she was given through sport growing up, she is passionate about paying it forward and providing that service to others.

Being one of the first female wrestlers to compete at the Olympics was a historic experience that she will never forget.

“It was really incredible,” O’Donnell Bacher said. “Growing up here in Alaska where things are small and you’re a fish in a little pond, and then you go off out of the United States and see, ‘Oh wow, this is how I stack up here,’ that was really cool and it was really neat to be a part of something the first year.”

When she went to college at Pacific University over 20 years ago, there were only five colleges that offered women’s wrestling for her to choose from. Now, there are over 180 institutions where girls can compete at different levels.

“They can wrestle at a top-level school or a junior college all over the country,” O’Donnell Bacher said. “They have opportunities for scholarships, to be part of a team and develop themselves educationally as well as athletically.”

The advancement of the sport among the female community can have impacts that reverberate beyond the mat.

“It’s kind of about wrestling but it’s about so much more,” O’Donnell Bacher said. “It’s about girls getting an education who maybe wouldn’t have gone off to college anyhow and those girls who were going to college to get degrees to be teachers, nurses or maybe engineers and come back to Alaska maybe to support the next generation.”