Hailey Corona is a physical education teacher at Wasatch High School, the new girls wrestling coach and Olympic hopeful.
Corona started wrestling when she was 8 and since girls wrestling was not yet a sanctioned sport, she quite literally took down the boys. She showed such promise during high school that she received a scholarship to live and train at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
“I went and wrestled the World Championships in Slovakia when I was 14, because I had won Nationals and made a world team," she said. "I also competed in Brazil at the Pan American Games where I won gold there, I took seventh at Worlds, I've won nationals a couple times and probably placed at more national tournaments than I can count so I did have some success growing up and got to be coached and be around some of the best athletes in the world.”
She hopes to make the team for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris and will compete in upcoming qualifier tournaments. She said she loves that wrestling is a personal sport, a competition to be the best version of herself every day.
“I grew up with a lot of anxiety and wrestling completely changed my life and how I hold myself and the confidence that I have," said Corona. "And so the lessons that I've learned from wrestling continue to carry on with me throughout my personal life. And so it's kind of my mental escape being able to go and wrestle. It's my favorite thing.”
Wasatch High School has one of the top boy’s wrestling programs in Utah so she was thrilled when she was recruited a year ago to develop a program for the girls. She said working as a coach has been very rewarding.
“Being able to see the girls walk into the room as girls that were hardly able to do our warm ups and control their bodies," she said. "And then by the end of the year looking like actual wrestlers. They were now a lot more confident girls that were able to hold themselves to this higher standard of knowing that they could work hard and push through hard things.”
Corona said she had 30 girls participate in what she called “a phenomenal first year.” Four girls qualified to compete at the state championships.
Regan Heywood is one of those athletes. She is a junior who hails from wrestling royalty: three of her brothers were state champs. She said they were her role models but she never dreamed she would be able to wrestle.
“Honestly I just had a lot of wins, lots of losses and just learned a lot," said Heywood. "I feel like the biggest thing was just like gaining my confidence in wrestling with it being so new. I know, it’s new everywhere. But I'm just gaining my confidence and being able to learn how to work through failure and to let it kind of fuel me.”
That confidence took her all the way to the state championships where she placed sixth her first year of wrestling.
So, what does her father think of “daddy’s little girl” competing?
“Looking back now, but my dad had always said things like he would never let his daughter wrestle," she said. "Which is funny, because now he's like, my biggest fan.”
And as the program continues to gain momentum at Wasatch, there will be a lot more fans to fuel these fiery young ladies.
