By Rob Mentzer
Jessika Rottier started wrestling when she was 4 years old. She wanted to be like her big brother, she said.
Rottier is from Pulaski, and she started competing in youth leagues around the Green Bay area. There wasn’t a girls wrestling program at her school, so she joined the boys team, and competed exclusively against boys until college.
"It wasn’t hard for me because that’s the way I grew up," Rottier said. "None of the guys I wrestled had any problems with it. I didn’t have any problems with it."
She was also really good at it.
Wrestling is a sport but it’s also a discipline, almost a lifestyle. Besides the grind of the daily workouts and physically demanding practices, it requires an equally intense mental and even emotional focus. You learn who you are through the sport, she said. You push yourself to your limit and then past it. Rottier loved everything about it.
Women’s wrestling might be the fastest-growing sport in the country, with an explosion of participation at the high school and college levels.
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