First-Year Wrestler Ayden Schauer Prepares for State Tournament

Won Sectionals with three straight pins

GRAND RAPIDS, Minn.- This week, Minnesota’s top high school wrestlers will compete in St. Paul at the MSHSL State Tournament.

That will include senior Ayden Schauer of Grand Rapids, who’s coming off her section-winning run, where she pinned all three of her opponents.

“I remember stepping on the mat for the first time,” says Ayden. “I was like, ‘Oh, crap. I don’t know how this is going to go. I don’t know where I’m going to go.'” Growing up in a family full of wrestlers, Schauer was around the sport her entire childhood.

“To be honest, when she was younger, she hated wrestling because she had to watch her brothers sit up in the stands all day, and she said she never wanted to wrestle.” Mike Schauer — Ayden’s father and head coach — never thought his daughter would compete in the sport. However, her brothers finally convinced her to give it a try.

“They saw (Tamyra Mensah-Stock), who won gold in the Olympics after wrestling for two years. And they’re like ‘Ayden, that could be you!’ It’s not going to be me, of course,” Ayden laughs, “I just thought, ‘Well, I’m a senior, might as well do it now.'”

“We try to keep things really simple for a beginning wrestler, and her very first match was a person that already went to state.” explains Mike. “She went out there and pinned right away and it was like, okay, we may have something here.”

While Ayden’s siblings wrestled, she was interested in theater and dance, which ironically may have actually given her a head-start on the mats.

“Her footwork is phenomenal,” Smiled Mike. “She has very fast footwork, she has good balance. And even her theater stuff…I think that helped her feel confident on the mat.”

As Ayden prepares for the State Tournament, she’s enjoying every second she has left of her first — and final — year in high school wrestling. While not every first-year wrestler will have the same kind of immediate success Ayden has had, it’s a reminder that going outside your comfort zone can yield unexpected results.

“It’s a fun sport. You meet a lot of interesting people,” Ayden says. “Yeah, you may look dumb sometimes, but it’s going to happen, you’re going to lose. Like, I knew I wasn’t going to stay undefeated for that long, and I didn’t. The first time I lost, I was bummed out, but I came back and won that tournament.”