MOUNT VERNON — As sunlight flooded into Hilliard Davidson’s auxiliary gym – the sound of whistles blowing and fans cheering muffled by distance – tears filled Emma Rinehart’s eyes.
The Mount Vernon freshman sat, curled up on the gym’s far wall, as competition carried on next door. She was flanked by two of her biggest supporters: Nate Cornell, Mount Vernon’s head coach, and Ashlynn Brokaw, a close friend and teammate who had just completed her sixth-grade season for Mount Vernon Middle School.
That day – Feb. 20, 2021 – Rinehart had done the improbable. She’d become the first female wrestler in school history to win a match at the Ohio High School Wrestling Coaches Association Girls State Tournament, pinning Lutheran West’s Larissa Krantz 44 seconds into their first-round bout.
This after making more history the week prior, becoming Mount Vernon’s first female wrestler to win a district title and qualify for state.
But on that Saturday afternoon, in the moments after Rinehart’s consolation quarterfinal loss, none of that mattered. She’d been eliminated. Rinehart would be heading home with one win and two losses – no trip to the podium, no medal, and no trophy.
Rinehart and Cornell spoke for nearly 20 minutes that day, sitting against the auxiliary gym wall. They analyzed, vented and reflected. Then they made an agreement.
“Her and I just made a deal with each other,” Cornell said afterwards. “You’ve got three more years. We don’t ever want to leave here (again) without putting our feet on that podium and getting a medal around our neck.”
Thus began the journey.
In the year since, Rinehart has moved on but she has not forgotten. She still remembers the deep, visceral pain that brought her to tears that day. And she’s used it as fuel.
“I think it’s really just pushed me to work super hard,” Rinehart said Sunday at Olentangy Orange, moments after claiming her second straight OHSWCA Central District title and qualifying for the state tournament.
“I don’t want to go 1-2 again.”
Rinehart’s relentlessness over the last year has paid off. The sophomore is currently ranked fifth in Ohio at 115 pounds, according to American Women’s Wrestling, having won 30 of her 34 matches this season. She pinned all four of her opponents at districts on Sunday, and will head back to Hilliard Davidson this weekend as a state title contender.
But she’s also made strides in other areas. In a time where girls wrestling is becoming increasingly popular – particularly in Ohio, where the OHSAA has announced it will become an officially sanctioned sport next year – Rinehart has taken on a leadership role.
The confidence she’s gained through hard work and experience has allowed her to become a role model for the program’s younger female wrestlers. Though humble and oftentimes shy, Rinehart has begun to embrace the fact that, decades from now, girls in Mount Vernon will view her as a trailblazer.
Many already do.
“It’s definitely inspiring,” said Vanessa Oswalt, who wrestled at Mount Vernon herself in the early 2000s and has directly influenced Rinehart’s love for the sport.
“She’s got about 20 girls in the youth program that look up to her. She’s got (Brokaw), who’s in middle school right now, and she also looks up to her. She’s really becoming a leader to these young girls, and it’s been so much fun to watch Emma grow as a person.”
This is the story of that growth – both on the mat and off – in the year since Rinehart’s initial state run. This is the story of those tears, and everything they’ve inspired.
***
Rinehart’s evolution into one of Ohio’s top 115-pound wrestlers can best be described by a sequence that occurred during Sunday’s district semifinal match.
Rinehart led 4-0 after one period against Olentangy Orange’s Josephine Nickoloff. As the referee glanced toward Nickoloff, asking which position she preferred to start the second period, the sophomore chose top.
In the past, Cornell said, this may have flustered Rinehart. She’s always been a skilled top wrestler, but learning to win consistently from the bottom has been a process.
And her opponents know this, Cornell said.
“Some of these girls here know that she’s very talented on top,” he said. “They are gonna choose top on her, so they don’t have to worry about Emma getting on top.”
As Nickoloff announced her decision, however, Rinehart did not waver. She did not grimace, or panic, or fuss. In fact, her body language didn’t change at all.
She lowered herself to the mat, and when the referee blew his whistle to begin the second period, it was on.
“Instead of kind of being panicked or worried because she’s on bottom, she just lines right up, she looks right at that official, gets right to her feet and gets a (point),” Cornell recalled proudly afterwards. “That has been really nice to see.”
Rinehart pinned Nickoloff a mere 42 seconds later. A strategy that may have worked at one point – preying on a part of Rinehart’s game that had yet to be developed – was now ineffective. This, Cornell says, symbolizes Rinehart’s maturation more than anything.
“It’s her confidence doing that, and also just her aggressiveness,” Cornell said. “As soon as the match starts, she’s going after the girl. All the girls that she’s wrestled, they’re almost backing up, while Emma’s kind of pushing the action forward.”
It’s not that Rinehart lacked confidence before. One could argue that stepping foot in Mount Vernon’s varsity wrestling room last fall – the only girl in a room full of boys, competing in a sport historically designed for the opposite gender – required uncommon confidence. And it did, according to Cornell and others within the program.
But the confidence Rinehart exudes now – the kind required for state-ranked wrestlers, who also serve as role models for the youth in their community – is entirely different. It is another notch higher; another year wiser. It is the confidence of a leader – and a potential state champion.
“Last year, we were just happy to be a state qualifier. That was a goal of hers,” Cornell said. “Now, once we won the district title last year, it was like, ‘OK, now we have a good chance of being a state placer.’ Obviously, we fell short of that.
“But that’s the thing with Emma is, OK, that was a goal. We reached the goal of being a state qualifier. Now we need to kind of make that next step.”
Where does this new, higher-level confidence come from?
It isn’t complicated, Rinehart said. It’s the work.
From the minute her freshman season ended, Rinehart has been laser-focused on the goal at hand. She began lifting four days a week last summer, and maintained that schedule through soccer season in the fall. She honed her craft during open-mat sessions at Olentangy Orange, wrestling against girls from across central Ohio, and also competed in open tournaments.
But it didn’t stop there. Rinehart has continued to put in extra work during the season, finding time before and after practice to improve. She’ll often arrive at 6 a.m. to work on conditioning – jumping rope, running, riding the Airdyne bike, or throwing the battle ropes – and stay after practice to lift.
She’ll also take advantage of any opportunity to compete – regardless of how tired she might be, or how far away that competition might be. After what Cornell described as a “tough practice” on Feb. 8, Rinehart and Brokaw booked it down to Bellville to do it all over again.
“They both got in the car and they went to Clear Fork and did another full-on practice,” Cornell recalled incredulously. “That’s just another day for them.”
Rinehart has fully committed herself to the process, Cornell said – so much so that she despises days off.
When Mount Vernon City Schools called off Feb. 3 and 4 due to Winter Storm Landon – a weather event that blanketed Knox County with half-a-foot of snow and nearly an inch of ice – Cornell said he received a message. It was from Rinehart.
“She was so worried about getting off of her training regimen, she was contacting me like, ‘Hey, can we still go in and workout?’ I was like, ‘We can’t. We’re under a (Level Two snow emergency) right now,’” Cornell said with a laugh. “But that’s the type of person she is.”
Winning has a cost, Cornell said, and Rinehart has proven she’s more than willing to pay it.
“She knows that she puts in the work Monday through Friday, so on Saturdays, she can walk out there and be very confident. …” the fourth-year head coach said.
“She has worked relentlessly ever since that state tournament last year. She knows that feeling of not being a state placer, so that’s a big drive for her. She works her butt off to make sure that she does what she needs to do to not feel that pain that she felt last year.”
Hard work has built Rinehart’s confidence over the last year. But so has increased competition.
Rinehart’s ability to wrestle in matches against other girls last year was limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“With COVID, a lot of the female wrestling tournaments were either canceled, or the ones that weren’t canceled, they were just looking for full teams like Olentangy Orange, Delaware Hayes, Marysville. So with us only having one girl, they weren’t gonna get us in there, just because they were trying to limit the numbers due to COVID,” Cornell said last year. “That was a little bit frustrating.”
Rinehart’s preseason competition and training opportunities were also limited heading into her freshman year.
This year, however, was a different story.
Rinehart was able to wrestle 30 matches against girls in the regular season, while also continuing to wrestle against the boys every day in practice. After wrestling no tournaments during the regular season last year, she competed in six this winter – placing first at Hamilton Township, Delaware and Watkins Memorial, second at Mechanicsburg and Columbia, and third at Reynoldsburg.
“Last year, I didn’t even get to wrestle girls until the district tournament, so just getting to wrestle any girls this year was really exciting,” Rinehart said. “I think it really just helped me to wrestle more, to see how that style is compared to boys.”
This combination of factors – the relentless workout regimen, mixed with the full-scale competition schedule – has taken Rinehart’s game to another level. Her confidence has followed.
This was never more evident than Sunday, when Rinehart pinned all four opponents to advance to state. She appeared cool, calm and collected throughout the day – moving throughout the arena as if she belonged, which of course, she did.
When Rinehart pinned Reynoldsburg’s Rowan Straughter in the second period of the district championship match, she rose off the mat and smiled. Then she flexed for the crowd.
“A year ago,” Cornell said with a smile, “that was not Emma.”
***
While Rinehart has committed to becoming one of the state’s top wrestlers, she’s also committed to something much bigger: Becoming the face of a sport in her community.
Take the evening of Feb. 2, for example.
It was the night before Winter Storm Landon was set to take hold in north central Ohio, and Mount Vernon was set to wrestle Highland in a dual that included youth, middle school and high school matches.
There were three girls wrestling that night in Mount Vernon’s youth program. They were in preschool, second grade and fifth grade – all with varying levels of skill and experience.
Rinehart was in the gym that night. And she could have kept to herself; after all, she was slated to wrestle later, and it would have been perfectly reasonable to slip on her headphones and save energy.
But she and Brokaw did not. Instead, they spent the night watching Mount Vernon’s female youth wrestlers, then meeting up with them afterwards to offer encouragement and advice.
They demonstrated moves, answered questions and handed out high-fives. They served both as participants and ambassadors – making an intentional effort to reach their wide-eyed, elementary-age counterparts and, in a sense, throw the ladder back down.
“It feels special because when I was younger, there wasn’t anyone. …” Rinehart said of the relationship between herself and Mount Vernon’s youth wrestlers. While Oswalt has served as a role model for Rinehart over the years, she was out of high school by the time Rinehart started wrestling.
“I didn’t have anyone at the high school to look up to,” Rinehart said. “So I try to go into the youth room as much as I can and help them out.”
The Highland dual isn’t the only example. Oswalt, Rinehart and Brokaw hosted a girls wrestling clinic at Energy Fieldhouse on Jan. 25, and around 20 youth grapplers attended.
They learned a couple moves on their feet, Rinehart said, as well as some turns. But they also got to meet the women-in-charge – the past, present and immediate future of Mount Vernon’s high school girls program, which is small now but will likely grow in the future.
The parents of those who attended said the experience was transformative.
“All the girls were so excited,” said Alicia Higgins, the mother of 5-year-old Amelia Higgins, who began wrestling this year in Mount Vernon’s Little Stingers program. Amelia was one of the first people Rinehart approached on Feb. 2 at Highland, crouching down to talk things over and give her a high-five after her match.
“When her coach announced (the clinic), she turned around and she’s like, ‘I’m going to that,’” Alicia recalled with a laugh. “And them just being there, I think, really inspired the girls to kind of keep going and just keep working. … It kind of almost put a spark in them to just keep trying and doing really well.”
Rinehart was already well-known in local wrestling circles. She was, after all, Mount Vernon’s first female wrestler to win a district title and qualify for the state tournament. And she did it as a freshman.
This intentional visibility, however, has only heightened her celebrity – particularly among the community’s younger female wrestlers, who parents say idolize the sophomore.
“When we see Emma go to our youth stuff, or even just stuff within the county, she has like a little fan club. These girls follow her around like Emma’s a superstar,” Cornell said with a grin.
“And Emma will never publicly admit this, but she loves it. It’s cool. The girls really look up to her. They always wanna go watch her wrestle at matches here, especially within the county.”
The ultimate goal, Cornell said, is to grow Mount Vernon’s girls wrestling program.
Rinehart and Brokaw remain the only female wrestlers at the middle school/high school level. And while they hold their own – Cornell classified the duo as “tough as nails,” consistently beating boys in practice rounds and competitions – he believes the program will only benefit from the inclusion of more female participants.
“Ash and Emma do a good job kind of working well with the boys, and on the other side, the boys do a good job working with Emma. But the more girls, the better,” Cornell said. “I think the more girls that we get out, and that other schools get out, it’s gonna be better for the sport.”
Cornell believes Rinehart’s success – along with her outreach – will play a direct role in that growth. The same goes for Brokaw, who is making history in her own right, having won OAC and OHWAY state wrestling championships as a sixth grader last year.
“That is really big at the youth level, those girls seeing Emma do so well. Hopefully, we can retain that into the middle school and then up to the high school,” Cornell said.
“Ash Brokaw’s the same way. They see Ash doing so well and so (hopefully we’ll) retain that through youth, middle school, high school, and kind of build up those girls’ numbers that haven’t come yet, but I know that they will because of Ash and Emma’s results and dedication.”
***
Rinehart finds herself in a unique situation locally, being Knox County’s only female wrestler at the high school level.
But if statewide trends continue, this won’t be the case for long.
Girls wrestling has grown substantially in Ohio over the last half-decade, according to Oswalt. There are 830 female wrestlers competing at the high school level statewide this year, according to the OHSWCA, up from 537 last year and 474 the year before that.
The number has nearly quadrupled since 2019, when the OHSWCA began hosting its annual state tournament at Hilliard Davidson High School.
“You can see the numbers jumped when an opportunity like that was given to these girls,” Oswalt said.
Numbers have increased so much that after years of deliberation, the OHSAA’s board voted in January to officially sanction the sport, beginning next school year.
This means the OHSAA will host a girls state wrestling tournament at the end of the year, just like it does for the boys. It will create more opportunities for girls to participate, Oswalt said, and will also help member schools fund girls wrestling programs.
Oswalt, who now coaches Olentangy Orange and has spearheaded efforts over the last decade-plus to sanction girls wrestling in Ohio, had a hard time describing her emotions on Jan. 13, the day the OHSAA announced its decision. She called the move historic, noting that Ohio would be the 33rd state to sanction the sport.
“There are no words to describe the emotions that I’m feeling,” Oswalt said in a text. “Overwhelmed with joy and relief. Girls have this opportunity for generations to come. Part of that relief is knowing that these girls won’t have to ever go through the struggles like myself, Jessi (Shirley) Frank or Paige Nemec had to go through 20 years ago.
“Girls wrestling has become widely accepted. It’s become a beautiful site to see. Girls from the past decades to present have paved the way for this day.”
The OHSAA’s decision to sanction girls wrestling is only expected to increase the sport’s popularity.
“The more eyes we get on this, the more growth there is. So right now, we’re just excited. …” Oswalt said. “Most of the states that have sanctioned girls wrestling, there has been a 200-900% increase in participation (afterwards). We’ve been on a steady incline since the OHSWCA took the state tourney on.
“So to see if the numbers get multiplied by 10 … it’s gonna be exciting to see.”
Rinehart shared this excitement on the day of the OHSAA’s announcement. She said she could hardly believe the news when it came across that morning.
“A lot of people have put a lot of hard work into it, so it’s just exciting that it’s finally gonna happen. …” Rinehart said.
“It was a major thing that needed to be done. So now that it’s done, I think that more girls are gonna be interested in it, because now they don’t have to wrestle boys. I feel like they will come and try it out because they know it’s a real sport.”
Rinehart acknowledged that, as girls wrestling continues to gain popularity, her job will become tougher. The field will become more crowded, and competition will stiffen. But she’s looking forward to the challenge.
“It’s really exciting because the sport, I feel like, is just really gonna explode now,” she said Sunday. “The level of wrestling’s just gonna go up, and the competition’s gonna get more tough. It has in the past year, but it’s gonna get better.”
Cornell said he knew heading into Jan. 13 that a decision would likely be made that day. He’d heard the OHSAA’s board would be meeting that morning, and girls wrestling would be on the agenda.
But until the official announcement came through, he had a hard time thinking about anything else.
“I was checking Twitter all day. I was refreshing, refreshing, refreshing,” he said with a laugh. “I was just waiting for it to come through. And as soon as it happened – even me knowing and feeling like it was going to come through – as soon as (I saw it) with my own two eyes, it was a good feeling.
“Just for the state of Ohio, Emma, and then a lot of the girls that she wrestles around with and practices with, too.”
***
Rinehart will get two years – the back half of her high school career – to compete for an OHSAA title.
If Cornell gets his wish, she will get to do so at the Schottenstein Center – on the state’s grandest stage, in front of roughly 20,000 fans, as the boys are accustomed to.
But until then, she’ll focus on taking care of business in the OHSWCA Girls State Tournament. That means heading back to Hilliard Davidson this weekend, with the goal of making history yet again.
If Rinehart places at state, she will become Mount Vernon’s first female wrestler to do so. A first-place finish would make her Knox County’s first state wrestling champion.
“It was really disappointing last year, so that’s what I’ve been working so hard for. …” Rinehart said Sunday. “(Getting) top-three is my ultimate goal.”
For most wrestlers – including the freshman version of Rinehart herself – this goal would be lofty. Intimidating. Likely out-of-reach.
But not for Rinehart now. Not for the wrestler in the orange-and-black singlet, whose hard-earned confidence – born from tears and forged by sweat – has taken her to new heights.
“She’s done really well at the district level, now let’s take that to the state level,” Cornell said of the sophomore’s mindset. “Her goal is to put her feet on the podium.”
The OHSWCA Girls State Tournament will begin Saturday at 11 a.m. Two championship rounds and two consolation rounds will be wrestled. State placers will be invited back Sunday at 11 a.m. for the tournament’s final rounds.
Check KnoxPages.com for updates on Rinehart’s progress throughout the weekend.
