Former Blaine wrestlers Genesis Vasquez and Jacob Westfall are at different points in their collegiate wrestling careers, with Vasquez’s just beginning and Westfall’s at its twilight, but both credit their high school programs for instilling in them a love of the sport.
Class of 2023 graduate Vasquez grew up with four older brothers. Learning to assert herself and be aggressive has always been second-nature to the college freshman finishing her first year at Washington State University.
Vasquez said she has always had that aggression, but didn’t quite know how to channel it until her freshman year of high school when Blaine started its first girls-only wrestling team.
The wrestling mat became a laboratory for Vasquez to learn a new sport that rewards controlled aggression. It also became a community of like-minded, strong girls to form even stronger bonds, Vasquez said.
“What kept me there after the painful practices and the beating we get from the sport of wrestling was really the community that wrestling brings,” Vasquez said. “The girls are amazing, I loved having a girls team. I love seeing the boys and supporting the boys [team], but having a coach that focuses on just the girls was an amazing thing.”
After four years wrestling for Blaine, Vasquez had a breakout freshman year for WSU’s wrestling club, earning an All-American honor, placing first in the 116-pound Northwest Conference Championships, and finishing the year with a 19-4 record.
She isn’t the only former Blaine wrestler seeing success at the collegiate level.
Western Washington University senior Jacob Westfall also earned All-American honors after a second-place finish in the 197-pound division in the Northwest Conference Championships. The Blaine class of 2019 graduate has become a veteran leader on the WWU club team, boasting a 14-7 record with eight wins by pin last season.
He also said he hopes to continue his wrestling career after college by coaching local youth teams.
Westfall’s WWU team earned 10 national competition qualifiers, three women and seven men, and Westfall was the lone mens wrestler to earn the title of All-American, along with junior Jada Yamada.
Westfall has given back to the Blaine program from which he graduated, even coaching as an assistant during the Covid-shortened 2020 season. His junior year at Blaine, he placed third in state, then seventh place his senior season.
A love for wrestling was ignited in him during those countless early mornings on the mat, Westfall said. That love grew exponentially after his seventh-place state finish ended his high school career.
He decided to forgo plans to play collegiate football, instead focusing on a college wrestling career that took him to Southwestern Oregon Community College for two years, then Warner Pacific University for a third year before transferring back home to finish his schooling at Western Washington University.
The decision seems to have paid off for Westfall, who finished his collegiate career as an All-American, is working toward earning a teaching degree, and now coaches all ages at the Whatcom Wrestling Academy.
Westfall said he hopes to coach his own high school wrestling program in the future.
“Wrestling is a very community-driven sport. It’s a sport where people really give back to the community in coaching and volunteering,” Westfall said. “I think the best way to do that is to help these young wrestlers grow both as athletes and as young adults.”
For Vasquez, her young collegiate career is just getting started.
Playing on a club team, rather than a sanctioned varsity sport like football or basketball, has its challenges and unique perks, according to both Vasquez and Westfall.
For Vasquez, wrestling daily with a small team – not unlike the teams she wrestled with at Blaine – builds an intense bond between teammates that couldn’t be matched at a larger program.
“Our team may be small, but everybody matters,” Vasquez said of her WSU team. “We depend on everybody to get better.”
While wrestling may seem like a uniquely individual sport, most wrestlers will say the exact opposite. It takes a team – a community – to build the strength that wrestling so desperately wants to beat out of you with its long, taxing practices and meets.
“It’s an individual sport, we have our own matches and our own mindset,” Vasquez said. “But at the end of the day, you’re not going to get better by yourself. You’re going to get better with a teammate and the whole team is going to get better together.”
Westfall said that the lack of scholarships for club wrestlers means everyone is there for the love of the game, and not the financial incentives.
“You’re there because you choose to. Some club wrestlers are tougher just because the fact that they choose to wrestle, rather than potentially doing it because it pays for their school,” Westfall said. “Obviously that’s not the case for every college wrestler, but we don’t get any money besides what we raise ourselves, so we have to be that much more committed to the sport of wrestling.”
What Westfall and Vasquez – who is working toward a degree in WSU’s esteemed veterinary college – most adamantly agree on is that the Blaine wrestling program instilled in them not only a love for wrestling, but a love for personal improvement and the strength to get there.
Vasquez said she’s ultimately thankful that she found a sport that could not only teach her how to pin her older brothers, but could show her a community of girls that want to better themselves every morning, leaving it all out on the mat.
“I think it’s a sport that every girl should try because it gets you out of your comfort zone and out of the norm that girls aren’t fighters or girls can’t be aggressive,” Vasquez said.
“It’s so fun when you have the right community and the right team.”
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