B.A. Girls Ready for a Repeat Championship

By MIKE MOGUIN
GTR Sports Writer

Broken Arrow finished a memorable year in its debut campaign in girls’ wrestling last year. 
Now the rewards are paying off. 
The turnout has increased as 50 girls have come out to wrestle, up from 40 last year.
The team now has its own wrestling room for workouts.
“We didn’t anticipate last year that we were going to have the turnout we did,” Broken Arrow girls wrestling coach Cassidy Jasperson said. “We thought a few girls would come on board and we would start with that. Then, when girls were flooding in, we just didn’t have the space. We had a nice room, it just did not fit us.”
But they managed to make things work. 
The athletic department got the room the girls needed during the offseason. 
“We are in the process right now of making that switch,” Jasperson said. “Basically, the old weight room was taken down and was transformed into our wrestling room. It is at least three times the size (compared to what they worked with last year), so it will be plenty big for all of us, brand new mats, and we are over the moon excited about it.”
The Lady Tigers went on to win the first girls wrestling state championship sanctioned by the OSSAA and are in position to repeat and accomplish more. 
Returning seniors Allison Hynes (118), Abby Lassiter (161), Olivia Brown (215) and junior Ki’esha Cathey (185) are the reigning state champions from their respective weight classes.
Also back is junior Ana Barnoski (147), who placed third last season, along with sophomore Aralease Callahan (112), junior Jaycee Melton (127) and senior Holly Waters (136). 
Only five girls, two who were state qualifiers, graduated from last year’s team. 
“We have a bunch of great new girls,” Jasperson said. “We have eighth-graders coming up to be freshmen and we have a bunch of new junior high girls,” Jasperson said. “That’s where we really saw the most of our growth this year. We have new girls we’re so excited about in high school, but we have a ton of new junior high school girls who came out because they chose to wrestle. They obviously got word of what we’re doing here and were interested. They are super-motivated,”
Jasperson has Gerald Harris on board as an assistant coach. Harris is also the head coach of the junior high squad with Jon Bullock being an assistant. 
Like other programs and other schools, Jasperson and her troops had to deal with the shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which occurred around spring break last March and two weeks after the state tournament. 
“It was very difficult. We couldn’t wrestle as a high school team,” Jasperson said. “But the girls were really great at getting in workouts. We stayed in communication, but we weren’t getting wrestling workouts. Broken Arrow girls’ high school and junior high teams did not practice, so I was worried that we have taken off too much time.
“When it hit, we didn’t know how long it was going to last,” Jasperson said. 
The second-year coach said she was apprehensive, questioning if her girls would come back a little rusty when practice started back up.
But when they returned, “the girls started without missing a beat,” she added. The practices have been incredible for preseason.
“The older girls are holding everyone accountable. We’re a team and it was like we didn’t have to reinstall anything about the way we do practices or the way our team functions,” Jasperson said. “They were wrestling hard and getting the rust out very quickly. I was very pleasantly surprised about that. 
“I think they were hungry. They missed it. They wanted to come in. They didn’t feel like they had to come in and wrestle. They were dying all summer to come in,” Jasperson added. 
“We’re hitting the ground. We’re picking up where we left off,” she added.
The Tiger girls participated in the Black and Gold Dual, a fan favorite Oct. 23-34 at the Broken Arrow gym. 
They are hosting the Broken Arrow Duals, an all-girls tournament on Dec. 19.