U.S. wrestler Helen Maroulis inspires next generation of women
In her seven years wrestling on the U.S team, Helen Maroulis has seen firsthand how women's wrestling has grown throughout the world.
Now in her role as one of eight ambassadors worldwide for women's wrestling, she's able to share her story and perhaps inspire the next generation of girls coming up through the sport.
The 23-year-old from Rockville, Md., is in St. Petersburg, Russia, this weekend to compete in the 2015 Women's World Cup, the dual meet championships featuring the top eight teams in the world. The competition marks the conclusion of United World Wrestling's Super 8 campaign, aimed at growing female participation in the sport.
In recent weeks, Maroulis has traveled to Switzerland as part of the Super 8 campaign, trained in Cuba and worked with young girls at a wrestling clinic in San Fernando, Calif.
Her message to the youngsters who showed up to learn. "Keep doing what they do, set high goals and high standards because the opportunities are there now," she said last week before flying to Russia. "They don't have to stop after high school or after middle school. They can travel the world and go to college and get a scholarship."
None of that seemed possible to Maroulis when she got her start at age 7, following her brother on to the wrestling mats. Women's wrestling became an Olympic sport at the 2004 Summer Games.
"I would not be the person you expected to be a wrestler if you knew me when I first started," she said. "I was really shy. I quit every sport that I tried because I was scared or I didn't like performing in front of people ... I think girls may look at the sport and think it's for someone who's already tough and already confident. For me, I want to explain to women that it's not true. It's given me confidence."
Maroulis has come a long way since wrestling against the boys on her first club team. She won her first world championships medal, a silver, in 2012, and added bronze last year.
In Russia this weekend, Maroulis will likely wrestle against some of the women she'll meet again next year at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro should she qualify for her first U.S. Olympic team. She is ranked No. 2 in the world at 121 pounds.
In the fall of 2013, Maroulis and her teammates were forced to wait to see if their sport would be restored to the Olympic program for 2020 after falling off the IOC's list of core sports. After a six month campaign by wrestling's leaders, the sport was reinstated after an IOC vote.
As part of wrestling's bid to remain in the Games, the sport's leaders added two more weight classes to give the women six, equal to the men in freestyle wrestling.
"I definitely think adding two weights has helped women's wrestling tremendously," Maroulis said. "I think now other countries recognize, 'OK, our men can get six medals and our women can get six medals.' And once they realized medals are medals, they started to recognize women's wrestling more and put more resources into women's wrestling."