With the shouts of onlooking coaches and parents echoing off the walls of the Ledyard High School “bomb shelter,” dozens of wrestling matches played themselves out across the mats as the Ledyard Youth Wrestling team finished up its season with a joint practice with Waterford.
Pint-sized wrestlers, mostly ages 6 to 12, struggled with their opponents, trying vehemently to gain the upper hand before the coach’s whistle blew.
One particularly hard-fought match right in front of where the parents were sitting looked much like all the others. That is, until the whistle blew and the head gear came off the victorious wrestler, letting her long hair fall across her shoulders. Not an average sight at most youth wrestling practices, but yet again, Emme Cronin is far from your average 10-year-old girl.
Weighing about 60 pounds soaking wet, which is light for her age, Cronin is not necessarily the image of intimidation, but the rest of her teammates, boys included, know looks can be deceiving. With a wry grin and good sense of humor, Cronin was quick to spell out her love for the sport.
“I like to make the boys cry,” she said, playfully.
“She definitely brings a different attitude to the team, because she is a girl,” Ledyard Youth Wrestling head coach Larry Duran said. “But most of the guys in the room don’t see her as a girl wrestling—they see her as part of the team, and they all treat her just like everybody else and she treats everybody just the same…I don’t tell anybody in that room, ‘Hey, she’s a girl, take it easy on her’ because I don’t have to. Everybody knows she’s a girl, everybody knows she’s good and that if they don’t wrestle hard then she’s gonna whup their butts.”
Duran, who has been the head coach for the Ledyard Youth Wrestling team for the past two years, has seen Cronin experience tremendous success.
Wrestling in numerous tournaments and almost always against boys her age and weight, Cronin has a winning history.
One might wonder what makes a girl want to wrestle against boys. The answer, as her mother, Julia, explained, is quite simple.
“When Emme was younger and her brothers got into wrestling I would have to take her to the practices because her father worked a later shift,” Julia said, “and she just said to me, ‘Hey mom, I want to wrestle too.’” Julia added, “When I was young, girls didn’t even play soccer, so I was thinking ‘no, girls don’t wrestle.’ But she was serious—she didn’t want to sit around and watch her brothers have fun wrestling, she wanted to wrestle too.”
And wrestle she did, joining the team at 7 years old and immediately making a name for herself by placing third in the year’s first tournament and with only a month of practice under her belt. Soon enough Cronin had won over any of the suspicious boys and truly became part of the gang.
“In my opinion, the biggest thing that Emme or any girl wrestler faces at that age is just having to wrestle mostly boys where they might fall into a situation where they are at a strength disadvantage because boys generally mature a little faster physically than girls, so they’re a little stronger,” Duran explained.
Over the course of her first and second seasons, Cronin continued her string of successes, gaining the advantage of experience and technique and placing in numerous tournaments. With the development of a Connecticut youth girls’ wrestling team last year, Cronin was able to travel to the national girls’ wrestling championship where she placed fifth in the nation.
Duran, who has watched her develop, explained that the key to Cronin’s success comes from an intense desire to compete.
“The special thing about Emme is her desire, her heart, and her love of wrestling,” Duran said. “It’s comparable to anyone else in that room if not more. Understanding that not a lot of girls wrestle, and that she’s going to have to wrestle boys most of the time, her desire is still there to compete and to do well. She enjoys what she’s doing...She loves the hard work, and she definitely puts forth as much as anybody else in that room if not more than most of them to accomplish what she wants.”
As her mother explained, Cronin is also an excellent student, always making grades “any parent would be proud of.” She also plays the tuba, rides horses, takes aikido classes, and is a member of the lacrosse team.
Heading into her fourth year, Cronin’s expectations were high. This season however, proved to be her most challenging yet.
Practicing with both the Ledyard youth team as well as the Connecticut girls’ squad had Cronin practicing three nights a week and wrestling at weekend tournaments, a schedule that was helping her to excel. Yet one evening while going through routine drills, Cronin fell to the mat just the wrong way and broke her arm, which caused her to miss five weeks in the middle of the season. A testament to her “never back down” mentality, when Cronin was first injured coaches felt her arm, squeezing to assess the amount of pain she was in and whether it was broken. Not flinching a bit and sitting out the remainder of practice, it wasn’t until she was in the car that she admitted to her mother how much pain she was in. Asked why she hadn’t told her coaches how badly she was hurt, Cronin simply told her mother that she couldn’t let the boys see her cry.
So with her arm in a cast, Cronin still attended every practice, watching from the sidelines and eager to get back into the fray. As soon as the cast came off and after a week of rehabilitation, Cronin began wrestling again, placing second in the New England Girls’ Championships. And with little time to get back to full form before the national championships in Michigan on March 29 and 30, Cronin entered one final tournament, a New England regional event held in southern Rhode Island. Cronin entered both the girls’ and boys’ tournaments, and took home first place in both divisions.
With the national championship in sight, Cronin said she is excited and hopes to do better than she did last year, but knows that trying her hardest is all that matters. Duran, who has watched her bounce back from her broken arm, feels she is more than ready to accomplish her goals.
“I know she has prepared herself both mentally and physically for the upcoming event,” Duran said, “and with her success last year placing fifth, well, it’s like I always tell all the kids, ‘You wrestle to wrestle and to have fun and enjoy what you’re doing, and if you don’t take first place that’s fine, because as long as you know you wrestled as hard as you could and you left it all out on the mat then it’s always a success.’ But for the nationals, it’s the same for her, Emme has a chance to be successful anywhere, and if she goes out there and does the best she can she’ll get the results she’s looking for.”