How Abby Green's growth led her to becoming Waverly's first state wrestling placer

WAVERLY − Abby Green likes to channel her inner Batman.

Catch a glimpse of the junior before any match of hers, and you'll often see her undergoing the routine that gets her into the mindset of the Dark Knight. She'll pace back and forth during warmups with her headphones on, blaring the song "It's Raining Vengeance," from the soundtrack for the 2022 film "The Batman." Often she'll wear a white kneepad with a gray Batman logo on it, and she has a small Batman mask she'll occasionally break out.

"That's what I like to enter into," Green said. "I think I'm in a Batman movie whenever I'm on the mat sometimes. Just playing that song and like, I like pacing because I like to keep my feet moving, that music just makes me zone in and like I am only on the mat."

That routine has guided Green to her best season of wrestling for the Tigers, both as an individual and for the program as a whole. At the state tournament, Green she became the first Waverly wrestler, as well as the first wrestler in the Southern Ohio Conference, to place at the state meet after earning fifth place in the 140-pound class.

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It's hard for Green and her coaches, Mindie Young and Scott Green, not to be proud of her progress. She's qualified for the state meet three years in a row, and each year brought another level of progression. In her freshman season, she wrestled in two matches and didn't score a point in either bout. The next year saw her bow out in the second consolation round.

Another year passed, and Green made history for her school and her conference. Granted, it didn't come easy. She and Scott Green spent plenty of time in the weight room almost as soon as her sophomore run in the state tournament ended.

"We basically lived in here, in the weight room, every morning from the end of last season until the end of the calendar year this past year," Scott said. "And she's hit up several camps and stuff, just trying to learn how to get better."

Some of the camps aren't far away. Green regularly attends one in Jackson hosted by Ohio State coach Tom Ryan and several wrestlers for the Buckeyes. But the one camp that she routinely points to as most helpful to her success is Purler Wrestling's summer camp, hosted just outside of St. Louis during the early summer.

Purler's camp is where Green expanded her horizons, and also tested her limits. Green estimated that across a full week with three blocks of wrestling per day, she wrestled for just under 50 hours while at the camp. All the while, she was absorbing wrestling styles of wrestlers from across the United States and Canada.

"There's people from literally everywhere, like my drill partner was from Canada," Green said. "There's people from all around the country going there, and it just gave me a new look on different wrestling types and really helped me level up my my take downs."

It wasn't just Green's technique that improved. Young noticed her more easily step into her role as a team captain this season, and transfer what she learned at Purler to the rest of her teammates. She believes that Green better absorbed the lessons taught by the camp because she had to look back on them so frequently when helping her teammates.

Young has also seen Green progress beyond her technique. Green has become much more level-headed compared to her freshman season. She's learned how to channel anger from a loss into further wins down the line. After falling in the state quarterfinals this year, her next three wins all came by pin.

"Abby as a freshman was, I know you wouldn't believe it, she was a very emotional wrestler," Young said. "She would get really upset, like you couldn't talk to her for 30 minutes after she lost her match ... Last year as a sophomore, it was a little better. Still if she lost a match, I let her walk off. I didn't say anything to her because I knew. This year, it's like she lost that first match, of course she was upset, but within five minutes she was like, 'Alright, I'm ready to go.' The maturity level that she has built over the last three years is amazing."

Green can easily track the progress she has made over the last year and change. It's not difficult when you're the first state placer in program history, and doing so as girls wrestling continues to reign as one of the fastest growing high school sports in the nation.

Even just a year ago, Green making the state tournament wasn't huge news for Waverly. This year, she noticed a visible interest as she made her run through postseason tournaments.

"This is the most recognition wrestling has gotten," Green said. "Nobody really cared very much. This is the first year I feel like wrestling has gotten the actual recognition it's deserved."

Does Green have a part to play in that recent recognition? No doubt. And she'll use that leverage to help grow the sport in whatever way she can, as well as continue to grow as wrestler in her own right.

This article originally appeared on Chillicothe Gazette: How Abby Green grew into Waverly's first state wrestling placer