Episode 173: Copper Hills High Female Wrestler Making History in Sport

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. She is a two-time State Champion female wrestler in Utah, a five-time All-American and has placed in the top six at three national wrestling competitions. On this episode of the Supercast, meet Copper Hills High senior Anya Hatch, who is also a world wrestling top-ten champion. To make her story even more incredible, Anya joined the sport of female wrestling just shy of two years ago. How is she accomplishing so much in such a short amount of time? Let's find out.

We’re here with Anya Hatch, a female wrestler here in Jordan School District, who has been traveling the world showing people her skills. Anya, thanks for taking time to talk with me today.

Anya Hatch:
Yeah, of course.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about what got you into wrestling?

Anya Hatch:
What got me into wrestling? Well, at first I did volleyball and then my sophomore year wrestling came out for Utah, cuz like it wasn't a thing. And my dad asked me to come out, and at first I was like, “no”. And then he asked me again and I was like, “Fine, I'll come try it out”. So I went, and like I told myself I was gonna just practice for a week and like, I'm done. Like, I'm out.

Anthony Godfrey:
And your dad knowing you probably knew better than to think that you were only going to do it for a week.

Anya Hatch:
At first, I was like, no. Like there's no way I'm gonna touch someone else. Like I cannot be physical.

Anthony Godfrey:
Volleyball is not a contact sport.

Anya Hatch:
Uh huh, volleyball is like a team thing.

Anthony Godfrey:
Bump set, spike, it seems very, you know, aggressive but organized.

Anya Hatch:
It is, and just knowing that like, I had to do this by myself. I didn't want to, but a week passed and I was really interested. What caught my attention was just the moves and just making new friends.

Anthony Godfrey:
Did you feel in the very first week that you did it, could you tell that you had some talent for it?

Anya Hatch:
Yes, I did. When I first started, I didn't know what I was doing, but I'm like a really fast learner. For a lot of people it was difficult, and for me it just came naturally.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. I can tell you that athletic events for me do not come naturally. I have to think about every single move. Nothing seems natural, so I'm always envious of people like you who are able to just jump in and pick up a sport. Volleyball, wrestling, what other sports do you participate in?

Anya Hatch:
When I was seven, eight years old I played soccer. And then when I got to my freshman or sophomore year, I did track. So soccer, track, and volleyball, and wrestling.

Anthony Godfrey:
That’s awesome. Not to say it doesn't take a lot of hard work, but it's great when you have that natural ability to kind of connect with what you're supposed to be doing. So what are some of the things that you've learned? You've only done this for less than two years, right?

Anya Hatch:
Yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about some of the things you've learned as a wrestler.

Anya Hatch:
As a wrestler, I learned it's tough. It mentally gets me stronger. I learned that like a lot because I'm mentally preparing, like by myself when it comes to a match. And I'm not used to that because for volleyball, it's like a team thing. If like, for volleyball, if I'm just playing by myself, then it's not gonna work out right. But for wrestling, like I'm mentally preparing and sometimes I warm up by myself. When I travel, I don't have a partner, so I'm just warming up by myself. And yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
When you're on a volleyball team and you're looking at other team members, you're analyzing what happened, what went right, what went wrong. But when you're on your own on the wrestling mat, all you can do is look inside. Try to figure out what you need to do differently.

Anya Hatch:
What I need to do, yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
What's your favorite move when you're wrestling?

Anya Hatch:
My favorite move is head throws. And a double blast.

Anthony Godfrey:
A double blast? Yeah. You gotta tell me what a double blast is. It sounds like a drink at 7-Eleven.

Anya Hatch:
A double blast is where like, I'm like running through their legs, but as I'm running through, I'm picking up, but I'm level changing and I'm like, double blasting.

Anthony Godfrey:
So you're running through picking them up and lowering?

Anya Hatch:
Yes, I'm lowering my level change and I'm like double blasting through.

Anthony Godfrey:
Stay with us when we come back more with Anya Hatch.

Break:
Hello, I'm Tracy Miller, President of the Jordan School District Board of Education. There are seven members on the Board of Education, one in each voting district. We are committed to listening and serving our constituents as we work together to provide the best possible learning environment for the students we serve. As members of the Jordan Board of Education, we believe it is our duty and responsibility to: increase student achievement; provide parents with the choices they deserve and desire; recognize and reward quality in educators; empower school leaders through policy governance and professional development; and communicate with the public, legislators, business leaders, cities, and parents. We invite you to get to know the Board member who represents you in your voting district, and to please join us at our monthly board meeting held on the fourth Tuesday of every month. Or listen from the comfort of your home, on our live stream. For more information and to find your Board member, visit jordandistrict.org. With parent and community input and support we will continue our work to give students every opportunity to succeed in Jordan District schools and beyond. Thank you for your support. We look forward to seeing you soon.

Anthony Godfrey:
Now we have your dad here so that I don't make you brag about yourself. I'm gonna let your dad brag about all of the titles and trophies you've been winning.

Jay Hatch:
Thank you. Yeah, Anya's very, very humble that way. She doesn't like to talk about herself. In fact, she gets really embarrassed. One of the funny things is being her coach and father at the same time. People always joke because whenever she wins a championship, she walks off the podium, comes right down and hands me the medal and walks off like she doesn't even care about it and tells me to put it in her drawer at home. So no, this last year was special for Anya. She became a three-time All-American last year, or this last summer, she competed in Folkstyle Nationals in Colorado Springs, Freestyle Nationals in Las Vegas, Nevada, and in the United States World Team trials in Dallas, Texas. And she placed top six at all three.

Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.

Jay Hatch:
If you place top eight, they're considered all American. So she's a three time all American this year. She had the opportunity to go down to Las Vegas and live down there for three months training with a club where they went and competed with the Mexican Olympic team where she, in about 25 seconds, pinned her Olympic opponent from Mexico.

Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.

Jay Hatch:
But they were down there for about 10 days training, and just learning, and growing, and everything. And then when she of course went to Rome. She didn't place top three, which, which she was really trying hard to do. But she placed top 10. She took 10th at the World Championships in Rome. But I think the biggest accomplishment she had there was five weeks before she went to Rome, she was in the Western States National Finals here in Farmington, Utah. And that's the double blast that she was talking to you about earlier.

She came down kind of awkwardly. She was beating the girl from Hawaii that she was wrestling, but she came down awkwardly and dislocated her right arm so bad that we had to aircast it and we had to go to the emergency room. The doctors had to put her under to put it back in place. And so that was literally five weeks before she was supposed to get on the airplane to Rome and a lot of people were like, there's no way. She's not gonna be able to compete. She's not gonna be ready. And so just through a lot of

Anya Hatch:
Yeah. People were like, you're crazy. You're not going to, like, she's not going to.

Jay Hatch:
A lot of healing and a lot of just a lot of prayers, a lot of different things. Right? I mean, it looked like she had a baseball in her elbow. Five and a half weeks later, she stepped on the mat in Rome, taped up like no other, and just said, I'm gonna go for it. And she went out and she lost a match to a girl from Croatia who had just finished winning the bronze medal in the European Championships and she lost a close match to her. And that right there was for us was the biggest victory of all. Is that she made it. She went out. She never made any excuses and she just went out and competed hard. But outside the international and national travel, she's a two time State Champion here in Utah. She's a senior this year, so she’ll be trying to get her third.

Anya Hatch:
And I'm gonna make it three.

Anthony Godfrey:
You're gonna make it three?

Anya Hatch:
I'm gonna make it three.

Anthony Godfrey:
I like your chances. That's really cool. Now tell me about training in Las Vegas. First of all, you were there for how long?

Anya Hatch:
I was there for three months.

Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.

Anya Hatch:
Actually it ended up being four months.

Anthony Godfrey:
And so tell me why the training looks like that. Get up maybe 11:30? Watch some Netflix for a couple of hours?

Anya Hatch:
No, no. We don't have time for that.

Anthony Godfrey:
Stop by In-N-Out Burger. No?

Anya Hatch:
No, I wish we had that, but we had three sessions every day and it was tough for me because usually, I'm a relaxed person and I like to watch Netflix, eat. I'm like a big snack eater, and I couldn't have that in Vegas. So like, I was cutting hard down there and it was real. I struggled. Yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
So tell me about what conditioning looks like.

Anya Hatch:
Our conditioning is, so first we start off with warmups and then we, like, we do sprinting drills. Like we do sprawl, sprint, and then like sprawl, shot, sprint. And then we're doing drills where we’re working a move over, and over, and over, and over, over again. And then our workouts go like go for two hours. And then we have a next session, we have three sessions and it's like two hours. Two hours. Two hours.

Anthony Godfrey:
What do you do to get psyched up before a match? Is there music you listen to or something you repeat in your head or something you tell yourself? What do you do to prepare moments before competition?

Anya Hatch:
I think positive. Like I tell myself, like, I think in my head like wrestling, like when I'm wrestling, I'm winning. So I'm like, in my head, I'm wrestling.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, I like that. I like that.

Jay Hatch:
We've got an incredible lady that's over Utah USA Wrestling by the name of Geneva Gray. And she taught these girls a year ago that as they're getting prepared for their matches, what Anya's talking about, is to go through some actual matches in your head with you winning and what moves you're gonna do and how you're gonna beat the next girl.

Anthony Godfrey:
Now by doing that and going over the moves in your head and then having repeated those moves over and over, does the muscle memory kick in and when it's time to do it, you just know what to do and you, and you just click into that mode?

Anya Hatch:
Yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me what it's like competing in Rome. Is that your first international competition?

Anya Hatch:
Yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
It is. To take top 10 in a world competition, the first time you're competing out of the country. That's pretty special. Did they do like in Hoosiers and measure the mat so that you can see that it's the same size?

Anya Hatch:
No. Their mat was really different. It was really slippery.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, it was different.

Anya Hatch:
It was different. It was slippery. It wasn't a normal mat that we usually have at every tournament. It was like a mat and then like, it was like foam under and then like something over it, like a cover. And it was very slippery. So like when we did warmups over there, like I would slip.

Anthony Godfrey:
How did you adjust?

Anya Hatch:
I just didn't think about it. I didn't worry about it, so I just did what I had to do.

Anthony Godfrey:
Good. That's impressive. Tell me about traveling to Rome. What did you think of Rome?

Anya Hatch:
I thought Rome was really beautiful. I love the pizza. It's great. Sorry, I had to bring up pizza.

Anthony Godfrey:
Did you get some pasta as well?

Anya Hatch:
Yes. It's like amazing.

Anthony Godfrey:
That's good.

Anya Hatch:
The best part.

Anthony Godfrey:
It's great that you got to have that experience combined with wrestling.

Anya Hatch:
Other than the food. I went on tours like about the Colosseum and it was just like amazing. Because in high school I would learn about the Colosseum and like be like amazed and like, I was just like so amazed because like I'm right there in front of it. Like it was just so cool.

Anthony Godfrey:
Now you were representing the country of Tonga while you were there, is that right?

Anya Hatch:
Yes, I was.

Anthony Godfrey:
That's awesome. And were there other wrestlers from Tonga? Because I understand you're the first to achieve that level, or are you the first from Tonga to compete at all at that competition?

Anya Hatch:
I'm the first woman to ever compete for Tonga.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, congratulations on that. That's fantastic. So what's in the future? What's next for you?

Anya Hatch:
I think just, I'm still gonna be going out to like national stuff and I'm not sure what college I'm gonna go to. But I am thinking of going to college and wrestling.

Anthony Godfrey:
So national competitions for the time being and looking forward to college from there.

Jay Hatch:
There is one big competition coming up that she's still trying to figure out and to sign on, but they have what's called the Oceanic Games. Every country is divided up into a region for the Olympics. Right. So for example, not every country can just send a woman to the Olympics to wrestle, right? There's only 16 women that qualify to go to the Olympics every four years. And so Tonga is part of the Pacific Island group that includes Africa and Australia. And so in May, on May 26th, you know, in Sydney, Australia is the Oceanic Games where you pre-qualify for the Olympics for your region. And so we're still figuring that out. We're still still trying to figure out if that's something she really wants to do. But that would be the next international event if she decides to. But we've got national events in high school coming up soon in less than a month that we're excited about.

Anya Hatch:
Yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
I was going to ask about the Olympics and see if that was something on your radar, but you’d just have to think through whether that's where you want to go.

Anya Hatch:
I've been thinking Yes, I have been thinking.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about your dad helping you discover wrestling and become a wrestler.

Anya Hatch:
He's been really supportive. And I love that about him. Just having him there when I'm here competing just really like, helps me a lot. Like not overthink. It makes me work harder because I know my dad's watching, you know, and I just, yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
How does it feel to have her competing at this level?

Jay Hatch:
It's great. I mean, I was a wrestler in high school. I had college opportunities when I was coming out of high school. When my oldest son back in 2008 came out of West Hills Middle School and said, ‘Hey dad, the wrestling team is having tryouts. Can I wrestle?’ I was a little bit surprised, I’d never really thought about it for my own kids. And so I got into coaching at Copper Hills back in 2008 and when all girls wrestling came around and Principal Veazie and others came to Scott Pace and I, and said, ‘Hey, will you guys start our new girls program?’ It's exciting for me to do a change, although I'd never coached girls before. I'd only coached boys for the last 13 years. And the first thing I thought of was, oh my gosh, if I'm gonna do this, then Anya's gotta do it.

And so when we got her in there, I was, I was hoping she'd stick with it. She never told me that she was planning on quitting after a week. She didn't tell me that until after she'd done really well. But you know, as a father, I'm super excited by her success. I mean, of course you always wanna see all of your children have success in whatever their life path is, and what they choose to do. But I think more importantly, even than her athletic successes, which Anya's one of those kids that could pretty much do anything athletically. I mean, I've had lacrosse coaches, girls football coaches, girls rugby coaches, you name it, call me and try and recruit her under their teams when she's never even done it before. But I think the most impressive thing, at least for me as a parent and as a father with her, is just who she is. I mean, she's just an amazing person. I mean, she's just a great kid. She's a wonderful daughter. She's loving, she endears people around her. She's a born leader. She just, people are drawn to her just because of her personality.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, it's obvious talking to her that all of that is absolutely true. And it shows just in the way you approach your sport and the hard work that you've done. So congratulations on being who you are and on this new part of your athletic life.

Anya Hatch:
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of The Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today, and we'll see you out there.