LA CROSSE — Food rewards can be important to high school wrestlers.
The season is a long and grueling road, and while it has been made through regulation a much healthier experience than it once was, a treat here and there goes a long way during the process of training and competing.
It was just about a year ago that Holmen High School sophomore Aini Anderson had her eyes on one of those treats as the Vikings prepared for a significant tournament in Wausau.
And this is how a craving for steak ended a very promising season.
It centers around what the team calls “Fat Steak Friday” when it attends this particular tournament.
“I was gonna get myself a big, fat steak, but I told myself I was going to go to an optional practice to earn this steak,” Anderson said. “I wanted to work hard, fuel myself up with steak and get ready for this huge tournament in Wausau on Saturday.”
Ultimate dodgeball obliterated that plan.
Five minutes in, Anderson was talking to coaches about an injured left arm and headed to the trainer’s room.
“You know me, I wasn’t going to give up anything (in that game of dodgeball),” Anderson said with a laugh. “I was gonna be a tough cookie and stick with all the boys.”
But a simultaneous lunge for a dodgeball led to a collision with a teammate, and Anderson took the worst of it.
“My little arm against his huge shin,” she said. “It was like a train hitting a car.”
The pain was immediate and an attempt by the stubborn wrestler to shrug it off was quickly shut down.
The arm was broken, and Anderson wasn’t only going to miss the Challenge Series that weekend, she was going to miss the rest of a very promising second season that included a fourth-place Bi-State Classic finish.
“One of the boys coaches saw me and said, ‘Hey, you should probably go see Aini in the training room,'” said Holmen girls coach Carl DeLuca, who was not at the practice. “I wandered down there and didn’t think much of it.
“(Athletic trainer) Morgan (Loken) said, ‘I’m pretty sure Aini broke her arm.’ I thought she was kidding, but she wasn’t.”
A kid who has truly taken advantage of opportunity during her lifetime was suddenly sidelined. That wasn’t a good place for someone who chose to experience just about anything possible in athletics — wrestling, basketball, track and field, gymnastics, tennis, log rolling — and outside of it — orchestra (violin), guitar, dance, baking — while growing up.
Surgery was scheduled, and Anderson — log-rolling world champion, buy the way – was assured that competing in the postseason after a miracle recovery was off the table. She pushed to get back on a wrestling mat as soon as possible, and that became reality in the spring.
Anderson won the 100-pound junior state freestyle tournament at Wisconsin Dells in May. She appeared to be on track and ready to build on her partial sophomore season as a junior.
She has done exactly that by winning 16 of her first 17 matches. Anderson also became the Holmen girls program’s first Bi-State champion with two unbeaten days this week and a one-sided championship victory at the La Crosse Center.
Getting there, however, wasn’t a smooth process. Anderson’s left arm started giving her problems again in August, and that required a return trip to the doctor.
“It was back where just doing little things like putting on a coat or picking something up made it hurt again,” Anderson said.
It was decided that a second look should be taken at the plate and screws that were used to fix the arm in January. That’s when infected fluid was discovered and removed along with the plate and screws.
Anderson’s arm was stitched up again, and a long scar on the inside of it will always provide a reminder of the injury.
But it won’t stop her from fulfilling whatever her wrestling fate with the Vikings will be.
Anderson has become the leader of a program that started knocking down barriers since its beginning a few years ago.
This relatively new — she just started wrestling as a freshman — activity struck a chord with Anderson immediately because it was such a natural fit.
“We saw right away in practice that she was a really good athlete, which she is,” DeLuca said. “She missed the first couple weeks of the (freshman) season because she was performing in the Nutcracker, so she wasn’t doing any competition.
“So the first match of her life came in a dual against Decorah, and she wrestled an Iowa state place-winner. She didn’t get pinned, and that’s when we were like, ‘Wow, I think we’ve got something here.'”
Anderson saw it, too. She pared down some of her activities and put more of her time into wrestling.
It was new, and it was exciting. The limited success she had early made her wonder what more she could do in this sport.
“It was my ability to pick up on things so fast and how much energy that gave me,” Anderson said of the attachment. “I learned this, now what can I learn next? How do I then level up on that? What can I perfect?
“For me, I just love that adrenaline and head-to-head contact. If I can perfect a takedown, I can perfect a pin, and it’s like a big puzzle.”
While Anderson won the Bi-State at 100 pounds, she is ranked second at 107 by Wisconsin Grappler. Her only loss of the season was an 11-5 setback at the hands of St. Croix Central’s Ayda Miller, who is ahead of Anderson on that list of rankings, the second week of December.
After watching last season’s state tournament and embracing the pain of watching wrestlers she had beaten and knew she could beat, Anderson is ready to do whatever it takes to secure the chance to compete at the Kohl Center in Madison this year. She did as a freshman, but the quest this time is much different.
She said after winning her Bi-State quarterfinal match on Monday that becoming the first Holmen girl to qualify and win the prestigious hometown tournament were the immediate goals facing her.
But Anderson is also looking beyond the La Crosse Center.
“Hopefully, I can be the first (Holmen) girls to win state one day,” she said. “With my hard work, determination and spirit, I think I can do it.”
