'They'll be animals': Matanzas girls wrestling working toward 2nd state title and beyond

PALM COAST — Tiana Fries traveled all over the place this offseason.

Iowa for the AAU Junior Olympics. Missouri for a wrestling camp. North Carolina for the Super 32 Challenge and Virginia for the National High School Coaches Association tournament.

“I think I went to Georgia, too,” the Matanzas junior said.

She went national and continued to establish herself on that level. Just like her dad, Pirates coach Mike Fries, hopes his team does this season.

After claiming a girls state championship last March, the Pirates have a loftier objective for the next four months.

“The goal is to be top five in the country,” Mike Fries said. “That’s really what we’re shooting for.”

It isn’t some fairytale pipedream, either.

Right now, Matanzas ranks first in Florida and 13th in the nation. It kicks off its season Friday at University’s Lady Clash of the Titans.

“Yes, we want to win another state championship,” Mike Fries said. “Obviously, that’s a huge thing. But we’re going to focus on national top five. If we get to top five, a state championship is going to fall right into place anyway.”

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The Pirates roster only two seniors but return plenty of experience. Juniors Fries, Kendall Bibla and Mariah Mills form the core.

Fries won an individual state championship in 2022. Bibla captured one last season while Mills placed third at 110 pounds.

And they wrestle all year long. It’s something Mike Fries emphasizes to his entire team. He estimates a few of the girls competed in 60-70 matches across multiple states last summer. The team even hosted an optional workout on Thanksgiving.

“Most of them come, and that’s why we’re able to go and just smash people,” Mike Fries said.

He, boys coach TJ Gillin and assistant coach Jeremiah Marschka call each other every night and create game plans for each kid. Sometimes, those chats last 30 minutes. Sometimes, it’s an hour.

“And then call back, another 30 minutes,” Fries said with a laugh. “It’s so funny. (Gillin’s) wife bought him AirPods for his birthday so she didn’t have to hear me.”

They teach each wrestler the basics. Once a wrestler has those down pat — which is the stage in which Fries says his wrestlers currently reside — they can shift to different variations of the stances and moves to find the versions that suit them best.

“I’ve been in a lot of rooms where everybody gets taught the same things, everybody does the same drills,” Fries said. “But one kid might not be as fast as one kid. One kid might be super fast but not as explosive finishing. You want to kind of tweak each move to fit that kid’s ability. What’s great is, all the coaches we have are different styles of wrestlers … So we can show the kids (each one).”

The result: improvement and evolution, even for the best Pirates.

With a smile, Bibla said she hasn’t gone a day without doing any wrestling-related activities in months.

“I put in a lot more work than I did last year because I want to defend my state championship … I think there’s a huge difference (in me now compared to last season). I never thought I’d be where I am right now. Because of all the hours of work I’ve put in, it’s made me grow as a person and a wrestler.”

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Now, each month during the season, Mike Fries is posing a new challenge to his Matanzas wrestlers. The November challenge, spanning from Nov. 6-30, includes doing 450 pullups, 1,800 pushups, 1,800 situps and running 20 miles.

If a wrestler reaches less than half those totals, Fries will give her a white shirt to wear to practice. If she eclipses half but doesn’t quite hit the target, she’ll receive a gray shirt. If she completes the challenge, she’ll earn a blue shirt.

Then, the Pirates have to wear those shirts to practice as a way of motivation and recognition.

“If they do this, they’ll be animals and they won’t even know it,” Fries said.

He has never used these challenges before. It goes back to those nightly phone calls with Gillin and Marschka and the planning they did all summer.

“How are we going to get them to be successful today but also making sure they’re improving to get better by March?” Fries said. “There are two different levels of today good and March good.”

The Pirates want March good to not only be state title-worthy for the second year in a row but national-top-five good.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: High school girls wrestling: Matanzas takes aim at national top five