Salata establishing herself as one of U.S.'s best young female grapplers

BY ED WRIGHT
Aug, 12, 2010, 11:15 p.m.

  At the rate she's going, it won't be long before Julia Salata has more stop signs than most subdivisions.

  Weight-class champions at the U.S. National Women Wrestling Championships are presented plaques that are the shape of a stop sign.

  Salata, a senior-to-be at Canton High School, earned her second octagon-shaped trophy in two years last month at the prestigious tournament in Fargo, N.D.

  After cruising into the 146-pound final match with a pair of relatively easy pins, Salata outlasted Demi Strub in the championship match, winning the third period, 1-0. Freestyle matches are won by the first wrestler to win two periods.

  "I put in a lot of hard work in the off-season," Salata said, when asked for her key to success. "Some of the girls take it easy once the high school wrestling season ends until just before nationals, but I try to keep working all summer."

  Salata, who won a silver medal at the Pan-American Games in May, took up wrestling three years ago to fill a void in her schedule.

  She's been giving opponents fits ever since.

  "At the end of my eighth-grade year at East Middle School, I really didn't have a spring sport, which drove me crazy because I'm an active person," she said. "When I found out there was going to be a wrestling team, I was like, 'O.K., that works.'

  "At the end of the middle-school season, they had a tournament with all the middle schools and I won my weight class. Canton's coach at the time, Casey Randolph, asked me, 'Hey, do you want to come wrestle for us?' and I said, 'Sure.'

  Salata wrestled at 119 pounds her first two years at Canton before switching between 125 and 130 her junior season.

  "It was kind of tough (breaking into the varsity line-up) last year because Waleed Faraj - a three-time state-qualifier - was at 125 and Mitch Wolski was at 130. I wrestled wherever they needed me."

  Have there been any major obstacles for a girl competing in a male-dominated sport?

  "Not really," she said. "My teammates have been awesome. There are usually two or three girls at every tournament and the number of girls who wrestle is a lot higher than it was five years ago.

  "My middle-school coach, Ben Griffin, is an assistant coach at Canton, so that made it easier for me, too."

  With Faraj and Wolski both graduated, Salata is expecting to see a lot of time on the varsity mats this coming winter.

  She nearly didn't return for her senior season at Canton due to an offer from the U.S. Olympic Education Center, which is based at Northern Michigan University in Marquette.

  "The coach up there offered me a resident-athlete position," Salata said. "It took me about a week to decide what I was going to do, but I decided to come back to Canton for my senior year."

  She said NMU is one of the colleges she is considering attending beginning next fall.

  Women's wrestling was added to the Summer Olympic Games in 2004. Salata is a serious contender to wrestle for the U.S. in the 2016 Games in Rio de Janiero.

  "The Olympic coach at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs knows of me," she said. "Wrestling in the Olympics is definitely a goal of mine. I just have to keep working hard."

  Ed Wright can be reached at (734) 453-1980 or info@plymouthcantonsports.com.