Alaska wrestlers take on Olympic and world champion at Juneau camp

“My goal?” Amelia Fawcett, 18, asked after a session in the Juneau Girls Wrestling Clinic on Wednesday. “I want to be an Olympic champion, like Amit.”

The present and future of Alaska’s women’s wrestling program mingled on the mat this week with Amit Elor, 21, the 2024 Olympic and 2023 world championship gold medalist. The allure of training under arguably the country’s greatest female wrestler brought grapplers from across the state.

“This camp means everything,” Fawcett, a 2025 Colony High School graduate, said. “I wanted to come here so badly just to meet her. Like, she’s just pretty … incredible. She won worlds and Olympics at 20, and she’s the youngest to do it, and that’s amazing.”

Elor is an eight-time world champion (two Senior, two Under-23, three Under-20, one Cadet). She became the youngest Senior World Championship title holder at age 18 in 2022, in any style or gender, and repeated in 2023, both at 72 kilograms (159 pounds). In last year’s Olympics at Paris, she became the youngest U.S. wrestler, male or female, to win gold, earning the medal at 68 kilograms (150 pounds).

At the camp, Elor demonstrated the things she has become known for on the international stage.

“I can tell that everyone is super in love with wrestling here,” Elor said. “The energy feels different here, you know. I’m trying to understand the culture in Alaska. Everyone is really nice, but they also seem very calm, peaceful, so it’s just been very interesting for me to get to know everybody and visit another state. The girls are really great listeners. They’re trying super hard. I can tell a lot of them just started wrestling. I heard from coach here that women’s wrestling in Alaska has grown tremendously. So you can definitely tell that there’s a lot of new wrestlers, but they’re all really eager. I think there’s actually one or two girls here that yesterday was their first day wrestling. They decided to try out wrestling with this camp, and they are doing amazing. Many of the girls have come from some other sport and they are really getting the hang of wrestling.”

Juneau Youth Wrestling Club president Jason Hass noted the importance of having Elor in Juneau.

“I think the club has a longtime goal of trying to be the best in the region and the best in the state, and I think to be best we have to learn from the best,” Hass said. “So I think it’s awesome to get to realize that we’re to this point now that we are able to bring the best people in the world in and to teach our girls and hopefully it just keeps building from here and next year there will be even more girls… I just really like her demeanor. Since she’s younger, she’s very relatable to the girls and she has an awesome and positive social media presence. And I think a lot of these girls, even some that don’t follow wrestling a lot, know who she is… I feel like it’s not all about trying to win as many medals as you can, but just learning in the process and trying to be the best version of yourself and she’s just a real positive role model in general.”

Elor said she saw herself in many of the campers.

“I would tell the younger version of myself not to be so stressed and worried all the time and to have fun and live in the moment a little bit more,” Elor said. “Because I definitely think I had years that I was so obsessed with training and becoming better and winning that I felt like the years just passed by and as far as memories and moments I don’t have as much as I want to have right now… I think starting just before the Olympics, it was really important for me to truly train and live in the moment because I wanted to leave the Olympics knowing that no matter what, win or lose, I enjoyed what it meant to be an Olympian. I really had fun in the competition and I think that actually worked out better for me and I performed really well because of it, because I was so happy and so excited to be there, so grateful… So, yeah, just relax a little bit and have fun. People start their sports because it’s fun for them and because they’re passionate about it and so it is important to not accidentally lose yourself in the process and forget about the reason why you started in the first place.”

Elor demonstrated numerous moves with Fawcett in the camp.

Fawcett, a two-time state wrestling champion, plans to attend 2025 NAIA women’s wrestling national champions Life University in Marietta, Georgia, majoring in business and chiropractic. Five times, since 2020, she has been a triple-crown winner at the prestigious Western States Tournament, meaning she won all three disciplines at the event – Freestyle, Greco-Roman and Folkstyle.

“I think wrestling for me it’s more of like the community,” Fawcett said. “I like the friends I make and like the people I’m surrounded with. I like their drive and Elor has shown us anything is possible.”

Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé sophomore Toriana Johnson, 15, had been waiting for Elor to arrive in town.

“I met her at my work at Goldbelt Tram a couple days ago and she signed my singlet,” Johnson said. “I was waiting for her all day long. My coach told me that he bought her tickets to the tram so I was waiting all day. I had my singlet ready and everything. I was just so excited to meet her and I almost teared up because I was so thankful. It means a lot to me. I look up to her. She’s very successful at a very young age. So she has a lot in front of her. If she can do something like that, that gives me motivation to think that I can do things like that. So, I’m learning from the best, technically. She went to the Olympics, she won first place, so I’m going to try my best to remember all these things and really think about them and practice them.”

Elor started wrestling at age four while watching an older sister and brother compete.

“All the time watching them during their practices, wrestling just looked so fun,” Elor said. “It was unbearable for me to be a viewer. My mom had to hold me back from going onto the mat and wrestling these giant high schoolers and I was a 4-year-old little girl. It was just very compelling, and then immediately when I started wrestling, it just felt very natural and fun to me. Just controlling somebody, learning how to take them down. Just the roughhousing of it… I grew up playing so many different sports but slowly learned over time that wrestling was my favorite and I continued to slowly fall more and more in love with it over the years.”

Continued Elor, “Of course, there are differences between then and now. There are hard moments, but you actually enjoy how difficult it is, and so we shouldn’t stray away from that and lose our purpose or lose our identity outside of the sport. We don’t want to accidentally make the sport our entire identity, either. So if have hobbies, do not stop doing them. Still try to prioritize some time with friends and family. Of course, we sacrifice a lot to be athletes, but we try to keep a balance.”

Petersburg Mitkof Middle School eighth grader Freya Fenner, 13, had a chance to share mat time, and balance, with Elor.

“I like that it is a contact sport and it’s very competitive because I’ve always been competitive,” Fenner said. “I like to watch Amit on social media and stuff and I watch her wrestle and watch videos of her in the Olympics and all her other wrestling and I thought it’d just be good to come here and be coached by her.”

Haines High School freshman Makayla Henry, 14, and eighth grader Lylah Wray, 13, and her younger sister Hazel Wray, 10, accompanied volunteer coach Hannah Mason to Juneau for the camp.

“It’s an amazing opportunity coming from a small town like Haines,” Mason said. “Our program has been growing exponentially the past couple years. My husband is one of the coaches, the assistant coach on the high school team and the head coach for the middle schoolers, and we’ve seen a growing number of girls interested so it’s been an exciting new adventure for Haines and amazing opportunity that we have to come here and work with Amit.”

Henry’s older brother is a two-time state champion, winning in 2023 and 2024.

“I like the competitiveness … and being able to win is a good feeling,” Makayla Henry said. “And I really got into it because of my brother, too. He’s a two-time state champ so I looked up to him and that made me want to join it and get better. He set the bar high, so now I’m trying to accomplish that, too.”

Lylah Wray said she liked the sport’s physicality. “My entire life I’ve just done swimming and like non-physical sports so when I saw that people had control over the other person I just really liked that and my older brother, he’s a freshman, does it so that is what made me want to try it and it is incredible to learn from Amit,” she said.

Elor only wrestled her high school freshman season, winning the state championship at College Park High School in Pleasant Hill, California.

“That was special for me just because I grew up watching my older brother and sister wrestle in the state championships in California,” Elor said. “It was the first year that they had the California state championships, girls and boys, wrestling side by side. Normally girls wrestled in a separate, smaller venue so this was really special…But probably a moment that really stuck out for me, obviously, is the Olympic finals and just everything that followed after that. I think it’s more a bunch of little moments that accumulated the whole experience of the Olympics. It was surreal and it surpassed my expectations and I have memories to last a lifetime… First time in the village… first time seeing the legends like Simone Biles, LeBron James… like all these athletes, all in one place from all over the world and how the world just came together during the Olympics.”

Elor recently withdrew from the final qualifying stage to represent Team USA in September’s World Championships in Zagreb, Croatia. She had won the semifinals and was the favorite to continue.

“I’ve been dealing with a few injuries and recently discovered I’m anemic,” Elor said. “I struggled with long-term pneumonia after the Olympics. My immune system went down, and it’s just very difficult for me to get back to training without getting sick again. I’m currently struggling with that a little bit. So for me it was the best decision right now to really just focus on giving back, staying in the wrestling community, but not competing. Really taking care of my health and putting that first at the moment. I went to world team trials and it truly was very bad for me. So it is a really difficult decision, but the most important thing is the L.A. 2028 Olympics and I know I’ll be good for that.”

Elor noted the importance of a healthy relationship with the sport, especially in the social media age.

“I think especially in sports with revealing clothing, track and field, wrestling, gymnastics, a lot of athletes can become too worried about their appearance — and comparing their appearance with their competitors, too, rather than focusing on how they feel and how they’re taking care of themselves physically,” she said. “I’ve had friends in wrestling that would be living off one cookie per day and already dehydrating themselves a week out from competition. All these really bad things that not a lot of people are noticing. So I would just tell all the athletes that performance comes first, this is not bodybuilding, and to just really start to learn and pay attention and figure out how to properly listen to your body. Communicate with others on how you’re feeling and do not be afraid to put yourself first. Athletes can be selfish, right, that’s how it should be. Your body is like a machine and you’re supposed to go out there and perform. So it’s very important to have proper nutrition, to fuel yourself and to listen to your body.”

Elor demonstrated a counter-tie grip on Wasilla High School sophomore Ruby Thomas, 16, who traveled to Juneau with Wasilla juniors Taryn Wright, 16, and Taylor Cooley, 16.

“It’s beautiful here and it’s just amazing to see all these girls wrestling and to get to meet Amit,” Thomas said. “I love the team aspect and the independence of wrestling. You can always get better and you can ask anybody and they’ll give you advice. I have so many questions for Amit because I hope to get a scholarship to wrestle in college.”

Wright said, “I like the fact that it’s an individual sport and it’s up to me to better myself and I’m accountable for all of my mistakes and my success. And everyone around me is helping to better me and I can take what I want from it and use it to the best of my ability to get better. Watching Amit, it is like looking into the future, seeing someone that’s wrestled for so much longer at such a higher skill level. It’s really cool to be able to learn from her and see how she’s ten steps ahead and able to provide so much help and technique to help us get better.”

Mt. Edgecumbe High School’s Region V champion Sophie Didrickson, 17, was part of a group of Hoonah-raised wrestlers attending the clinic.

“The camp helped me learn a lot more techniques because the difference between being a heavyweight and a lightweight is vast and having somebody who’s in between like Amit and can teach both different parts helps me get over my fear of different moves and gets me out of my comfort zone,” Didrickson said. “Wrestling has shown me that girls can do anything guys can do, that it’s not just a guy’s thing, that girls can throw guys around, and I’ve seen it. I’ve done it. My first match I’ve ever wrestled in my life was against a guy from Petersburg who ended up being six foot. Huge dude, his name’s Jonas. He graduated like a couple years ago. But at that time he was in eighth grade and I was in fifth. I lost the match but I still ended up getting in there and wrestling him and I’ve had to wrestle like guys when I lived in Hoonah and was on the Hoonah Braves team… I asked Amit what is the best thing to do to get over nerves, and she said, ‘It’s best to have nerves because it builds your adrenaline for matches.’ She went into a match one time with no nerves and she ended up losing it because she wasn’t into the match. So the best thing is to have nerves but not too much.”

Hoonah freshman Ava Hinchman, 14, a two-time region club champion, and Hoonah sophomore Harlee Brown, 15, a Region V high school champion, noted the importance of having an Olympic champion travel to Juneau.

“I’m learning a lot, as are most the girls here,” Brown said. “Learning new moves and experiences. We’re not going to be as talented as people down south because they have all the famous people and big, huge camps and we don’t have any of that stuff. So it’s really big that we have someone super famous from like the Lower 48 like Amit coming up here to teach us all these cool new things and pushing us.”

Added Hinchman, “It’s awesome she would come to Alaska to help grow women’s wrestling. She said at one time there wasn’t even a weight bracket for her. It just means a lot that women’s wrestling is growing and we can compete in the Olympics.” She said her goal is to become a women’s wrestler for the University of Iowa Hawkeyes.

JDHS freshman Aurora Lee, 14, was among a group of club wrestlers, including Ketchikan’s Kendall Hamilton, 13, and Thunder Mountain Middle School eighth graders Minali Reid, 12, Leighton Hall, 13, and Feangai Kivalu, 13.

“I think it’s cool being able to learn from somebody that is really good at the sport and was in the same spot as us,” Lee said. “In wrestling I like how you have to rely on yourself and not other people and everything’s kind of on you and if you mess up you can’t just blame it on someone else and it forces you to want to get better.”

Hamilton said, “I was raised in a wrestling family, like my family has been wrestling, on both sides, forever. I’m growing up in it so at first, I just did it. Now I do it because it is fun, and it is really fun to learn from an Olympic champion.”

Added Kivalu, “It is fun making friends in the tournaments and being competitive.”

Delta Junction High School freshman Clarissa Perez, 14, demonstrated a take-down move with Elor.

“It means a lot to me,” Perez said. “I saw a poster of the camp at a tournament and I was really excited about it. It means a lot that I was able to travel all the way from Delta Junction here to Juneau and work with Amit. It’s just surreal, like I can’t believe that I’m able to see her and able to meet her and learn from her.”

Redington Junior Senior High School wrestler Kiana Kroto, 17, said, “This is just such a great opportunity, even though I might not be going to school next year or wrestling, this is just a great opportunity to meet somebody new, learn new tricks. To exercise and to stay busy. Sports mean a lot to me, my main two are basketball and wrestling.”

In a question and answer period, Elor was asked by a wrestler about her motivation.

“A lot of things motivate me,” she said. “The nice part about wrestling is there’s really no limit to how good, how much knowledge you can get. It never ends. Even the best coaches in the world, best wrestlers, right, there’s things they just don’t know, things they can’t or don’t understand. It’s impossible to reach perfection in wrestling. There’s people pretty close to it, but it’s still pretty impossible. So it’s just trying to become the best version of yourself that motivates you. And I don’t have one specific form of motivation. For me, it is many things altogether. One is just showing up to the mat room, and I’ve always been competitive. When I was little, I wanted to be the very best. When we wrestled live, I was like, ‘I really don’t want anybody to score on me today.’ And if it wasn’t the goal, I’d be like, ‘Oh, I got it, score on everybody today.’ So just these goals to become better as far as a wrestler. And then, of course, specific competitions have motivated me, and the people who believe in me, the people have helped me over the years, they motivate me, too, right, because if they believe in me, I should believe in myself and I should also prove it to them and represent them… but later on when I got to compete internationally, it’s just the responsibility of representing your country, too, that motivates you, not to put a bad show or bad performance out there. And of course right now with women’s wrestling growing so much I feel like all of the top girls, including myself, we feel like there’s a huge responsibility to represent the sport properly and just put the name out there, grow it even more. And then help all these younger girls that are going to go on and do even better things in the future…”

Elor noted the importance of goals.

“I have a lot of future goals,” she said. “I want to make the L.A. 2028 Olympics. I’m from California, and that’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make it to another Olympics and then compete in my home state, not just country… And I want help grow women’s wrestling in the U.S. and all over the world as much as possible. Growing up, I was the only girl up until middle school in my area. I experienced what it’s like to feel like I was doing a non-existent sport, feeling like you don’t belong. I’ve experienced all of that. And women’s wrestling is just exploding right now so I want help grow it as much as possible and hopefully grow wrestling in general, make it so that wrestlers have as much opportunities as athletes in other sports… (laughs) Wrestling may seem simple to somebody that doesn’t fully understand, but I think you just gotta shove these people into our wrestling room for a day and make them try it just to see how hard it actually is.”

Anchorage fifth grader Pia Kopiasz, 10, from the Avalanche Wrestling Club, was well undersized when she was part of a demonstration by Elor.

“My dad got me into this sport and I have grown to love it a lot,” Kopiasz said. “At practice I have a lot of fun because, I don’t really know, I just, like, love the sport. I don’t have much natural talent, but I work harder, I guess. And did you see me out there with Amit? Oh man, she’s like my hero, I love it. It’s crazy for me. I went to another camp of hers in Washington, and when I saw her I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s her!’ And I was, like, my mind exploded. I have a chance to be an Olympic champion because of her, to dream because of her.”