Women’s Wrestling had its first season at Cerritos College and the team gives their expectations for the season and how the team is building chemistry.
Head Coach for Women’s Wrestling and Assistant Coach for Men’s Wrestling at Cerritos College, Dustin Kirk, talks about the team’s expectations and how the team has grown during the past month.
“This has actually been 10 years in the making, Donny Garriot [head coach for Men’s Wrestling], has been building this up in the last 10 years,” Kirk explained about the Women’s Wrestling at Cerritos College.
Jaylene Martinez, 126-pounder, said that she found out Cerritos was having a Women’s Wrestling team when she saw a post from Cerritos College, after her season ended in high school.
“The energy the coaches gave me, my coach Dustin seemed to be very supportive of the girls and had a lot of offer and he just seemed very friendly and welcoming,” she said.
Criminal Justice major Lucy Guadarrama, 109-pounder, found out that Cerritos had a Women’s Wrestling program and reached out to head coach D.K., who made a good impression on her.
“I feel like he’s always there to support us [and] he’s just there for us,” Martinez said about head coach Kirk and gave an example of buying rubber bands for some of the girls that didn’t have any,
The 2013-2014 CCCAA State Champion at Cerritos College, Coach Kirk, talked about the match against Vanguard University.
“I lost a few recruits to them so it’s cool to put together a team to beat them and that helps recruiting going forward,” Coach Kirk said, “Every week, every match we’ve gotten better and as a coach, that’s all you want.”
“I feel like the second day we came back [from back-to-back tournaments], I feel like all the girls performed way better than what they did on the first day,” Martinez said, “Now that they got the first match jitters out, I have high hopes.”
“I think the team is right where I want them to be, they’re doing well,” Coach Kirk pointed out, “I have a great group of young ladies that are very disciplined and hard-working.”
“I don’t want other four-years to look at us like, ‘they’re a community [college], they’re just easy,’” Guadarrama said, “Yeah we’re a community college but we’re going to push the pace and not give up.”
“It felt really nice to be on a girl’s wrestling team because I feel like we get so close and we’re family, we’re there to push each other at our best,” she said about the team around her.
Coach Kirk said that the group’s identity is that they’re hard-working girls but they’re silly and fun, “They love being at practice, they just have fun while they’re working.”
“We’ve grown a lot closer,” Martinez said about the team’s chemistry, “We do things outside of practice, we eat and hang out together so I think we made a lot of good friendships.”
The Women’s Head Coach names the three expectations he has for all of the Women Wrestlers, “Number one; go to class, number two, go to practice and number three, he is a good human.”
“As far as competition wise, let’s build chemistry, let’s have fun and I expect to win everything,” he adds.
To win at the CCCAA level, the head coach talked about the “what’s next mentality” and for the team to “continue to buy in and always strive for better.”
Lucy said it’ll take some time to win the CCCAA championship but it’s a mental game, “I feel like in a year or two, we’ll get there.”
Jaylene said that having the grit to keep fighting will get victories at the CCCAA level, “Just picking up the pace and if we keep working the way that we need to work with a goal in mind, I think we can do it.”
