TAMPA, Fla. — Bella McFarlane has quickly become one of the state’s most dominant female high school wrestlers.
“It wasn’t on my radar at all. I was thinking about doing basketball,” McFarlane, a junior at King High School, said. “I figured basketball wasn’t my thing.”
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Her regular-season record this season is 32-1 in the 170-pound weight class.
“She went from somebody who didn’t know anything,” King assistant coach Andre Chaisson said. “Now she’s been through the ringer.”
She only started wrestling during her freshman year.
Head coach Dave Sevier recruited her as an eighth-grader after noticing how strong she was in the weight room.
McFarlane would bench press 225, deadlift 350 and squat 305.
“I look at her and you need to wrestle,” Sevier said. “There’s no choice, you need to wrestle. Come find me in the fall. First day of school she came right over to me, ‘Coach, you said to come find you. I wanna wrestle.’”
Now, she’s close to unbeatable. In fact, her lone regular-season loss strengthened her.
“It made me feel humbled. I can now wrestle freely now,” she said. “No girl has still gotten an offensive point scored against me.”
“I have to fight with her a lot,” teammate Jeremyah Vazquez said. “She’s very strong for a girl, very technical. she’s very much an inspiration to everybody in this room. She made it kind of far her first year. She pushes us a lot, we look up to her a lot.”
McFarlane cemented her reputation as one of the best wrestlers in the country when she won the Ironman National Invitational tournament in December. She credits her coaches for her success.
“They put a lot of work into everybody to get them great,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to waste their time. Even if I don’t have a good season, I know they’re still going to help me improve and be the better version of myself.”
But she is having a great season, with one thing on her mind.
“This year, hopefully state champ.”
McFarlane placed 5th overall as a freshman and third overall as a sophomore.
The State Tournament begins on March 5.
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