For Shadow Hills girls’ wrestling coach Jody Davis, what his team accomplished Saturday was the culmination of years of hard work, but he likes to think of it as just the beginning.
The Knights won the CIF-SS Southern Division title as a team on Saturday, the first desert girls’ wrestling team to accomplish the feat. It was the collective effort of the group that included two individual champions, nine wrestlers advancing to the Masters meet, and others down the list collecting points to add to the total. Everyone working together allowed the Knights to score 223.0 points, just ahead of Mayfair with 207 points.
“Something like this, you always think it’s going to be your goal, but I didn’t think it would come so quick. It’s a little bit of a surprise to me,” Davis said of the team title. “I think it’s trust. The girls have trust in what we’re doing in practice, but also trusting each other. Trusting that each girl from the best to the lower-level wrestlers is going to do their best and contribute. This weekend showed that.”
Winning in general isn’t new to the Knights. They collected their fourth consecutive Desert Empire League title this year and no one on the team has ever lost a league dual meet. One grappler who knows a lot about winning is the team’s 140-pound leader Kaylin Montano.
Montano took the championship last week in her weight class at the divisional meet, repeating as a CIF-SS champion after winning her division last year. Last year she finished third at the Masters meet. This year, when she returns to Palm Springs High on Saturday for the Masters, she has her eyes on the top prize. She considers herself a better wrestler this year.
“I’ve been working more on the small details,” Montano said. “I think overall, I kind of just used muscle last year. This year there’s more technique, using different takedowns and stuff like that.”
As far as the team title, Montano, a senior, was still beaming about the team’s accomplishment.
“That was awesome, the girls went up there to battle and we did our thing,” she said.
So Montano will see her name go up on the school’s CIF-SS champions wall a second time, but she’s not alone this year.
Alyson Ortiz will join her on that wall after she won the championship at 105 pounds in impressive fashion. She won all of her matches by pin and in the championship match was leading 11-1 before finally pinning Brelynn Smith of Chaparral at 4:37.
In all, nine Knights will be on the mats Saturday in Palm Springs for the Masters meet after finishing in the top eight at the division meet. Two Knights finished third (Alisa Murillo at 110 and Isabel Navarro at 120), one finished fourth (Jaslene Benavides at 130), one finished fifth (Melany Ahumada at 115), two finished seventh (Leilani Iaone at 190 and Alyssa Hernandez 235) and one finished eighth (Melina Martinez at 135).
“This has been a great experience,” said Murillo, a junior on the team. “I’ve improved a lot and everyone treats everyone really well and fair, coaches, teammates. I think that really helps.”
Murillo has a goal of finishing in the top four at the Masters meet, which would earn her a trip to the state meet, something only Montano has accomplished so far.
The general secret to the team’s success has been Davis and his willingness to promote the sport of girls’ wrestling. It’s not an accident that the Knights have the most girls trying out for wrestling. It’s because Davis puts in the work to make sure young athletes at the school think of girls’ wrestling as an option.
The former Boise State wrestler takes wrestling very seriously but also makes it fun. You might remember him as a coach at Cathedral City High in 2017 hosting a wrestling meet outdoors on the high school’s football field to drum up interest in the sport.
He’s taken all that creativity and passion for the sport he loves to Shadow Hills for the past five years and built something special.
“They did this, they came together and they put in the work,” Davis said, deflecting the praise back on his team. “When you look back, you can’t win a CIF title without having a full team, and a full team with the same goal. I think that’s what makes me the most proud. And it feels like just the beginning, not the end of the journey.”
It’s something Montano senses, too, as she reflects on her four years in the program.
“I think about a lot of things. I think about us giving back to the community. Coach is big on that and that made our team stronger. I think about all those sweaty practices. I think about how when one of us is feeling down and needs a hug, whether it’s about wrestling or not, we’re there for each other. We have each other’s back and that’s a nice feeling. That’s what I think about when I think about this team,” Montano said.
Shad Powers covers high school sports for The Desert Sun. Reach him at [email protected].