VISALIA >> Christina Wilson won’t win the 121-pound division in the CIF State Girls’ Wrestling Championships this season, but the Upper Lake High School freshman is alive and well in the medal hunt and could still finish as high as third when the tournament wraps up today at the Visalia Convention Center.
Wilson, only the second Upper Lake girl to reach the state tournament, is the lone Lake County wrestler still going after day one of the competition. Middletown’s other entrant, 131-pound junior Kailei Foltmer. lost each of her first two matches by pin and was eliminated.
“There’s a lot of high quality wrestling down here,” Middletown coach Brian Hunt said. “She wrestled her butt off to get here and she’s only a junior, so she’s got another shot next year. She’ll be back.”
Wilson, the third-place medalist at the North Coast Section Championships earlier this month in Ukiah, needed only 29 seconds to pin her first-round opponent, AnaKaren Rodriguez of Porterville of the Central Section. Against Mia Dow, the runner-up in the Southern Section out of Walnut High School, Wilson lost 5-0, dropping her into the consolation bracket. She bounced back with a 5-1 win over senior Emily Hays of the Southern Section, surrendering only a penalty point.
