Port Clinton's Cadence Wallace ready to wrestle at USA Junior Nationals

PORT CLINTON — Until recently, Cadence Wallace had no choice but to wrestle with the boys. And when she first started, in her own words, she "got (her) butt kicked a little bit." But Wallace has always desired to prove people wrong, her mother Betsy said. Wallace did it as a football player growing up. She's done it more recently on the wrestling mats. And she's the type that even with straight-A grades in the classroom still wants to be better. "I enjoy the challenge and having to push myself more than anyone ever expected," Wallace said. Now, more than five years after taking up the sport, Wallace will travel to Fargo, North Dakota, for the USA Wrestling Junior Nationals, which begin July 17 in North Dakota State University's FargoDome. The Port Clinton rising junior only began wrestling against girls for the first time earlier this year, and she'll compete in the 127-pound weight division in Fargo. Wallace's goal at nationals is to win, but the trip to North Dakota — which she'll take alone — has more meaning than just a victory or two. "It's more exciting than anything to me," Wallace said, "that all the hard work that I've put in for the past few years is finally paying off." Immediate passion Wallace's first wrestling moves were performed as a demonstration for her younger brother Nathan, who is autistic. She was in fourth grade at the time. "(Nathan) needed the 100 percent help and showing what to do," Betsy said, "so she's been that sister to do everything for him and show him how to do it, so he would mimic her." It only took a few minutes on the mat to fall in love with the sport, Wallace said. She liked how personal wrestling was, that there was a firm individual objective to pursue. But if Wallace was going to wrestle, it'd be against boys. Girls wrestling still isn't an OHSAA-sanctioned high school sport, and there are very few participants at the youth level in northern Ohio. Dustin Cornell, an assistant at Port Clinton who worked with Wallace basically from the beginning, didn't see any hesitation from her. "She came in in fourth grade and she went right after the boys," Cornell said. "... She works just as hard as all the boys do." Wallace had already proven to herself, her mother and everyone else at that point that she wasn't out of place on a football field, so Betsy wasn't uncomfortable with her daughter taking up wrestling against the boys, too. That didn't mean Wallace went unnoticed, though. "I had to be very protective," Betsy said. "We're in a small town, so not everybody wants a girl to be a football player or wrestle. I think our town luckily has been really supportive of it and really encouraging of her doing this. No one's ever told her not to." Finding her drive Wallace has three siblings, all younger — a sister Dre, 14; Nathan, 13; and Conner, 11, who has a neuro-muscular disease. Betsy explained that, from an early age, Wallace recognized her role in helping raise her brothers and sister. "She realized she has to take care of them eventually and has to help them, so she has to do better to get further ahead to help them in their future," Betsy said. That mindset extended to everything Wallace did. On the wrestling mat, it meant that Wallace wouldn't quit the sport she fell for immediately just because it was hard. Instead, she worked to get better because that's how she's wired. "She just goes and goes and goes and goes," Cornell said. "You think she's gonna run out of steam, but she keeps grinding." "Just a real hard worker in the wrestling room," Port Clinton assistant John Hazzard added. "Just goes about her business, doesn't complain about anything. She's not a rah-rah type of person, a very quiet person. But she just goes about her business and practices really, really hard." By middle school, the effort began to pay off. At one meet, Wallace sat off to the side crying, and Cornell couldn't figure out what to do, Betsy said. Wallace wasn't crying out of sadness, though — they were tears of joy because she'd won two matches in the same day. "Motivation to get better is always in her blood," Cornell said. As Wallace has improved, she's caught some of her male opponents off guard, Cornell said. They're often surprised by her strength, he added. Wallace hears a disrespectful comment occasionally from her opposition, but most often, it's because of a strong performance. "Especially (guys) I beat," Wallace began, then grinned, "they're all a little mad at the end." A future's purpose Wallace doesn't know how long she wants to wrestle, just that she never wants to stop. "It's definitely something I want to continue," Wallace said. "I want to go as far as I can." To get there, Betsy's car has put on 5,000 miles in the past two months. Wallace began wrestling other girls in March, and there aren't local practices or camps to prepare Wallace for girls wrestling competitions. The pair has taken road trips to Cleveland, Rossford, Westlake, Westerville, Marion, Dayton, Elyria, Rocky River and Sylvania for Wallace to train. "She dreams big, and she wants a high goal," Betsy said. "... It's a lot of miles." Wallace's journey stops next in Fargo for nationals, and from there there'll likely be plenty more mileage. Wherever she goes, the inspiration Wallace provides will hit close to home. Nathan stopped wrestling even as his big sister and original demonstrator continued, but he wants to start again as an eighth-grader. For Conner, Wallace will always be what Betsy called his "wheelchair." If he needs to move somewhere, Wallace picks him up and gets him there. Betsy and Dre both attend matches and yell at Wallace, even if they're not quite sure of what they're shouting. Sometimes during the girls wrestling season, Betsy has suggested the wrong move but has seen how her daughter embraces independence to take control, anyway. Even in those solo moments on the mat, though, Wallace's bigger goals are all about others, Betsy said. "She does everything for everybody else," Betsy said. "Nothing is for herself. She knows she can do better. Her intention of wrestling is to go to college to be better to help support her brothers that can't support themselves. She wants to be able to take care of them. "She always has plans that she and her brother are gonna live next door to each other just because he needs help and she's gonna help him." At home on the mat Wallace has spent the months since the season ended making small tweaks — improving chest positioning when she takes shots at her opponent and increasing pressure while sprawling, for example. It's all done in the interest of honing in against better opponents who present limited margin for error. "She's very coachable," Hazzard said. "No matter what you suggest to her, she at least has an open mind about things to at least try it to see if it's gonna work for her or not work for her." Wallace placed either second or third in all four of her girls wrestling tournaments this year, all in Ohio. The national event could present a stiffer challenge, but Wallace won't be deterred. Since those first moments on a wrestling mat, Wallace has felt she belonged. It didn't matter if she lost, a lot at first. It didn't matter that she was almost always the only girl, either. All that has mattered is the individual battle at hand, with each feeling to Wallace like it meant so much more — a chance to further her future in the sport she loves, a chance to help her family, a chance to prove herself.