Tue, Nov 24 2009
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Girls making mark on mats Wrestling Insider, with Karl Pearson... Star BeaconShe has also found other support systems in her family.
"My older sister, Shannon, is a sophomore," Keenan said. "I think she likes to brag about me a bit." "Last year when I started to win a lot of matches, I really started to get into it," she said. "That made me work really hard to try and get even better. Now, if I'm told I need to do 200 pushups, I do them." Stolfer is glad Keenan showed up in his wrestling room, too, providing strength at the top of his lineup and pushing other Warriors like his son, Gregory, at 112 pounds and Kody Severino at 119. He saw her potential in junior high. "She placed fourth at the Auburn Junior High Tournament in eighth grade," he said. "She did that against boys from Mentor and Riverside, so I knew she was a real good wrestler. "Ashley has contributed as much to our success as anybody. She's a competitor. She always brings her A game when she wrestles. She's won 75 percent of her matches. I like the odds when you've got a wrestler like that out on the mat." Until this year, Gruskiewicz played basketball in the winter, but the encouragement of a teacher and one of the other PV wrestlers convinced her to try it. "I've always played basketball before, but I didn't want to play this year and I wanted to try something new," she said. "My gym teacher, Mr. (Jeff) Petrelli (an assistant wrestling coach), encouraged me to try it. Jarrod Woodard, who's also a wrestler, said I should try it, too. "I like it a lot. I think I'm going to do it again next year." One of the issues one might expect, the objection of parents, has really not been much of an issue for the three girls. "My mom and dad were pretty surprised when I told them I was doing it," Gruskiewicz said of Steve and Sharon Gruskiewicz. "They've been real supportive, though. They're fine with it." She has also found the Lakers are glad she's on the team and have tried to be helpful. "All the guys on the team are pretty nice," Gruskiewicz said. "I haven't had anybody that has been mean to me. "The first week was really hard for me because I didn't know anything. It probably took me a couple weeks to get comfortable, and the guys helped. I found out the conditioning is different than it is for cross country, too, because you use less muscles in cross country. I think wrestling conditioning will help me out for track later." Keenan has found her parents, John and Krisia Keenan, among her biggest fans. 
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