Isabel Herring did it again, winning the state championship title for the second year in a row.
Not many wrestlers at Cleveland can say they have done the same.
It has only happened two times in Cleveland history that a wrestler won the state championship twice in a row. The first one was Eric Luna, who won three state titles in a row in the 2007, 2008, and 2009 seasons. The second wrestler is Haley Vann, who also managed to win three in a row in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
And now Herring managed to win two in a row in the 2024 and 2025 seasons, the second girl wrestler in Cleveland High School history after Vann.
Despite being probably the most challenging wrestling competition in Oregon, the state tournament proved to be little resistance for Herring. The senior grappler made it look very easy to win, and she dominated, pinning every opponent from the round of 16 to the final.
Herring pinned Dema Al Rubaye of Aloha, the other finalist, in one minute and nine seconds. She pinned her opponent with incredible technique and power, securing the state title for the second year in a row.
“State [tournament] is never the hardest tournament for me,” said Herring, who finished the overall season with a 53-2 record.
She said that the most challenging competition for her wasn’t state, but was the Kelso Invitational on Jan. 10-11.
The Kelso Invitational is one of the biggest tournaments in the country, and she managed to place second, losing in the final to an All-American wrestler.
She is very proud of this result, almost more proud than winning the state tournament for the second time in a row.
But the thing she is most proud of is the development the team had this year in skills and achievements.
Herring did say that she thought it was a big mistake that wrestling coach Rustin Marchello fired the girls coach, Kiera “Kiki” Gabaldon on March 3, a few days after the state tournament, shocking all the girls on the team. She thought it was disrespectful to all the people who have been putting in so much effort to create and develop the girls’ wrestling team.
“I owe my victory to her and not to Marchello, and the girls are not going to be back if she is not there, so there is not going to be a girls’ wrestling team next year,” she said. (For the latest on that story, turn to page 8.)
Now that high school wrestling has concluded, several colleges are interested in Herring to compete for them next year. The number one college on her list is Simon Fraser College in Canada.
However, she says that she is seriously considering dropping wrestling for the sport of track cycling rather than wrestling as a sport in college because of the many wrestling injuries she has had in past years.
The message she has for all her teammates, both boys and girls, is “You shape the culture of your team.” Everyone represents the team spirit with their behaviors, and everybody has to step up in difficult situations and be an example for their teammates, she explained.
Herring said that last year on the way to winning the state title, she did not receive much respect from some coaches and boys teammates. But she ignored these small acts of disrespect and proved her ability on the mat.
Many people don’t consider girls’ wrestling the same level as boys’ wrestling. But Herring is very proud of how these last few years proved everybody wrong. The boys team can count on a lot more wrestlers than the girls team by a 3-1 margin, but the Cleveland girls program has been more successful than the boys team in the past two years.
She is sure that in the next few years, girls wrestling will be considered at the same level as boys wrestling, and more and more girls will start doing this sport. And if this is true, Herring will have played a large part in being a top athlete who inspired many other girls to start wrestling.
