Wrestling Talk Forums supported
USA Wrestling Kansas KWCA
Wrestling Talk Forums supported & maintained by USA Wrestling-Kansas
USAW USA Wrestling Kansas
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 5,262
A
Member
Member
A Offline
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 5,262
The following story is from the Lawrence World Journal and can be found in today's paper!

No more Ms. Nice Girl
‘Momma Mercer’ signs to wrestle in Oklahoma

By Jeff Fedotin

Friday, April 13, 2007

Lawrence High senior Emma Mercer has strawberry brown hair and an ever-present smile. She sings in the Christmas choir and teaches Bible school.

But when Oklahoma City University wrestling coach Archie Randall popped in a tape of her performance on the mat, an attribute stood out.

“Emma’s mean,” Randall said. “One of the matches she’s wrestling — I don’t know what the guy did, but she cross-faced the dog out of them.”

That disposition and skill will allow Mercer to enroll at OCU, a 4,500-student, NAIA school this fall. Mercer, who held a signing ceremony at the LHS library Thursday afternoon, became the first LHS girl to accept a wrestling scholarship.

But that number likely will grow in future years. During the last half decade, women’s wrestling has exploded. About 5,000 girls wrestled in high school this year with nearly half of those participants coming from Texas. Although the Lone Star State is the only one to allow girls to compete exclusively against each other in a separate division, Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii have individual girls titles.

OCU, one of six schools — along with Cumberland (Ky.), Menlo (Calif.), Missouri Valley, Northern Michigan, Pacific (Ore.) and Trinity (Conn.) — to offer collegiate women’s wrestling, revitalized its men’s wrestling program during 2006 for the first time since 1932. The university will inaugurate its first women’s wrestling season this fall, but Randall already has signed 27 girls. Within five weeks of announcing the sport’s commencement, the coach began receiving five to 10 e-mails a day.

Mercer attributes some of the sport’s surge among girls to its maiden appearance during the 2004 Olympic Games.

“That helped push some of the popularity for it,” she said. “They’re all coming out of the woodwork. The level of girls wrestling is just growing. There are more touraments. There are more opportunities.”

Mercer chose OCU as her next opportunity because of the proximity to Lawrence (a five-hour drive), the campus and also the academics.

“Education is the first thing you look for in a college,” Mercer said.

During her LHS career, the 119-pounder compiled a 50-79 record. Mercer earned other accolades, including a fourth-place finish in the USA Wrestling State Championships in the boys division and USA Wrestling All-American status in the Junior Women’s Freestyle Division.

Few would have predicted such success. Mercer humbly poked fun at her lack of athleticism, and none of her immediate family members wrestled.

During junior high she attended an athletic assembly where each coach introduced their sport. Upon learning her cousin, Mark Mercer, was interested in wrestling, she made a pact to join the team if he followed suit.

“She had been joking around with a cousin of hers,” said Jeff Mercer, Emma’s father. “We didn’t take it real seriously ... I thought this would last a couple of days.”

Instead wrestling became a four-year high school career in which she missed only two practices (because of illness), and that was not of her own volition.

“I sent her home,” LHS wrestling coach Mark Dulgarian said.

Dulgarian was part of the attending group at Thursday’s ceremony, which included Lions wrestlers, family members and coaches.

Students chanted her nickname, “Momma Mercer,” as she took her seat. Flahbulbs popped as she took her seat.

Now other local girls could follow Mercer’s groundbreaking lead on the collegiate mat.

“I hope so,” she said. “Wrestling is a great sport. Any motivation for girls to get in there is great. If I inspire a couple of girls to join, then that’s wonderful.”


Yours in wrestling,

The Swayz
swayz.wrestling@gmail.com recruiting help, promoting the sport& more!
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 1,671
K
Member
Member
K Offline
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 1,671
Congrats Emma and Good Luck in college!

Coach Harris

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 8,595
Member
Member
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 8,595
Ditto from me too!


Are you making a POSITIVE difference in the life of kids?

Randy Hinderliter
USAW Kansas
KWCA Rep/Coaches Liaison
Ottawa University Volunteer Assistant

Moderated by  Joe Knecht 

Link Copied to Clipboard
Who's Online Now
0 members (), 6 guests, and 0 robots.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Newest Members
Super Admin, bvswwrestling, CoachFitzOS, Dluce, Shawn Russell
12,303 Registered Users
Forum Statistics
Forums10
Topics36,090
Posts250,721
Members12,303
Most Online1,305
Mar 13th, 2025
Top Posters
usawks1 8,595
smokeycabin 6,248
Aaron Sweazy 5,262
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 8.0.0
(Release build 20240826)
Responsive Width:

PHP: 8.3.23 Page Time: 1.033s Queries: 20 (0.011s) Memory: 3.0135 MB (Peak: 3.5904 MB) Data Comp: Off Server Time: 2025-08-01 02:48:11 UTC
Valid HTML 5 and Valid CSS