Last Sunday, Easton Middle School hosted the inaugural District XI girls wrestling championship and Whitehall’s Ruth Rivera took the title at 136 pounds.

“It feels amazing. To know that all this work finally gets put out there and shown. That was the goal from day 1. I knew I wanted to make history at Whitehall and that’s exactly what I did,” said the recent East Stroudsburg commit after the tournament.

After tough matches in the quarterfinals and semis, the final was almost anticlimactic. Rivera got in a on an early double and pinned Northwestern’s Angelina Spachman in 51 seconds.

Her quarterfinal match against Catasauqua’s Aeriel Stallworth came down to the final ticks of the clock as she scored a takedown with 18 seconds left to claim a 3-1 decision.

In the semifinals against second-seeded Doniya Anwari of Liberty, she trailed 7-6 going into the final period, but a quick escape tied the bout and shortly thereafter Rivera converted a takedown into a pin to advance to the final.

The senior described that crucial match, “It was more of a mental game than physical. I was more anxious because I didn’t know if I would make it to the finals and if not, I would be going for third or fourth. I knew in the end I heard my coach yelling, ‘Pull the trigger! Pull the trigger!’ and that’s what I wanted to do.”

Head coach Tim Cunningham spoke about Rivera’s accomplishment, “It’s a great event, first time in history. It was nice to see Ruth become the first-ever district champ at 136 pounds. It was exciting. Hopefully we get a couple more in the future. Ruth has set a precedent here, so hopefully some other girls see that and decide that they want to be the next Ruth.”

Cunningham described the challenges for Rivera to prepare for the moment, “It’s tough not having a girls team. She wasn’t able to compete much this year, so that made it a little tougher on her. But our guys treat her like one of them, so when they wrestle with her, they don’t take it easy on her and she doesn’t take it easy on anyone and I think that helped her get a little tougher too.”

Rivera’s postseason will continue on Sunday as she competes in the Southeast Regional at Quakertown High School. She is on the opposite side of the bracket from returning (unofficial) state champion Haylie Jaffe of Kennett, who Rivera admits is someone she looks up to as a wrestler.

The top-four placers at regionals will advance to states, so it will take two wins to achieve that with an 8-person field. Girls states will run concurrently with the boys March 7-9 in Hershey.