YHS girls wrestling building confidence for late season with challenging tournaments early

Ben Hawk, Yelm High School’s second year girls head wrestling coach, knows that an important key to improvement — and potentially a path to the podium at the state tournament — is through trial by fire with competitive opponents.

Early in the 2025-26 season, Hawk’s team has gone through the ringer by competing in multiple notable tournaments in an effort to not only wrestle elite competition but to also prepare itself for a deep run in the postseason.

Early on in the wrestling season, Hawk’s Tornados have competed in multiple tournaments including Takedowns and Tiaras on Saturday, Dec. 13, at Orting High School, the Prairie Open tournament on Sunday, Dec. 14, and Buckles and Bruises on Saturday, Dec. 20, at Bethel High School.

Each tournament saw a different Tornado conclude with a podium finish, including a second place finish from Reagan McNally at Takedowns and Tiaras, a third place finish from Alyssa Fischer at the Prairie Open and a third place finish from Olivia Kaiser at Buckles and Bruises.

“We’re getting further and further along and putting the puzzle pieces together,” Hawk said. “There’s so many ninth and 10th grade girls who are being thrown into the fire. They’re getting very good lessons and chipping away. We’ve already had girls come back and defeat girls who beat us in the first few matches of the season. They’re overall improving and realizing what the goal is and what they’re planning for in practice.

“We’re going to keep chipping away at the best in the state all season long and hopefully that puts us in the best position to take down the best in our league and qualify as many as we can for the state tournament,” he continued.

Perhaps the biggest of the three tournaments early in the season was the second annual Prairie Open — which was hosted at YHS. According to Hawk, over 350 competitors “fought it out” in an open tournament format.

“The second annual Prairie Open was pretty cool. This is one of the bigger tournaments around,” Hawk said. “We had state finalists who didn’t win the tournament. We had state medalists not win the tournament. We had a bunch of really good girls not win the tournament. It was so competitive and I didn’t imagine it was going to be as big of a bloodbath as it was.”

Additionally, Hawk said that Spanaway Lake High School earned the Prairie Open’s team award at the conclusion of the competition — with Auburn High School finishing closely in second place.

The second year coach also recognized and highlighted Fischer — the only Tornado to podium in the team’s home tournament.

“We had a surprise. Our highest finisher was Alyssa Fischer,” Hawk said. “She hadn’t wrestled in a year or two. She wrestled as a younger wrestler and she had knee surgery last year. This was her first time wrestling in quite a while and she came out on fire and won a bunch of matches. She was the only one who walked away with a medal on our team.

“It was a pretty impressive tournament,” Hawk continued. “Our girls fought their tails off. It was an eye opener on what they signed up for and we’re already seeing results.”

While YHS and schools across Washington are on Christmas break, Hawk noted the team will continue their holiday practices in order to prepare for the Pacific Coast Championship tournament in Ridgefield on Monday, Dec. 29, and Tuesday, Dec. 30.

The Tornados will return home for a South Puget Sound League (SPSL) duel at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 14, against the Sumner Spartans.

“They have firepower,” Hawk said. “It would be cool to have everyone in the town out for that one. They have some firepower on their team and we have some young guns ready to go and see what we can do in a duel against Sumner. If we can put some points on the board against them, we’ll be sitting well for the rest of the league.”