Like many Camp Verde wrestling siblings, Rowen and Caiden Wolfe always compete to win.
In their Weekend Wars on June 25, they both came out on top.
“You cheated,” fourth-grader Caiden Wolfe teased his older sister, Rowen, a fifth-grader at Camp Verde Elementary School. “You catch them with your moves when you’re not supposed to.”
In just 18 months, the 77-pound defending girls state champion has been taught well by her head coach, Travis Black.
“I go from 75 to 82 [pounds], so it’s kind of hard to find people my weight,” Wolfe said. “I only wrestle, like, two other girls.”
Besides their mother, Caiden Wolfe joked — and fourth-grader Cynthia Henson.
“Other boys don’t want to wrestle me because they see me and they’re scared they’re going to lose,” Wolfe said.
“I ask them if it’s because I’m a girl. They say, ‘I think, but I think it’s just because you’re a good wrestler.’”
“It’s usually the blonde ones,” added Caiden Wolfe, whose June 26 win was his first in three Weekend Wars after coming into his first dehydrated. “She’s more above my level.”
Although she is six pounds heavier, with two wins and two runner-up finishes this summer, Henson looks up to Rowen Wolfe.
“She’s too advanced,” said Henson, whose brother, Austin, introduced her to wrestling just a year prior to her third-place finish March 12 at State. “I want to, finally, get first place next year.”
Wolfe’s next goal is to wrestle with the boys at their state championships.
“She could be Olympic — I’m serious,” said Mario Chagolla Sr., director of Weekend Wars. “In all the years I’ve been coaching, I’ve only seen one other [wrestler] like her — Hailey Lake.
“She was tough. Even the boys hated to wrestle her.”
If successful, Wolfe would follow in the footsteps of cousins Jake, Jared, Josh and Joseph Wolfe, who combined for six state championships at Camp Verde High School between 2005 and 2008.
“They always took it easy on [Caiden],” she said, “because I was a girl and he was a boy.”
For more photos and full local results from July 9’s Weekend Wars, please see the Wednesday, July 20, issues of the Camp Verde Journal and Cottonwood Journal Extra.
