Comeback Kid Ally Williams tunes into mother’s voice and snaps to, completing one of her three come-from-behind victories and takes second places second at Hobart sectional

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Ally Williams has competed for the Chesterton girls wrestling team since it was an emerging sport two years ago before it gained full IHSAA status last season.
Yet, Williams doesn’t claim to be immune to an occasional rookie mistake, such as the one she made during her semifinal match at the Hobart sectional last Friday.
Williams was on top of her opponent as the match had less than a minute remaining, yet unbeknownst to her, she was not on top on the scoreboard. She was two points behind.
“Coach Scharp was trying to tell me and I didn’t really understand,” Williams said.
Luckily, Ally’s ears are in tune with her mother’s voice and there was still time left to turn around the match.
“I heard my mom and I looked at the (scoreboard). I wouldn’t have known if my mom wasn’t yelling at me and in the last 20 seconds I got the takedown,” she said.
And she won the match vs. Knox sophomore Abbigail Snyder, 10-9, to advance to the title match, where she faced Hobart phenom Corabella Wesley and the 33-0 record that the freshman took into the match.
When a wrestler as dominant as Wesley is in your division, second place can almost feel like first. Wesley pinned Williams in 1:05, which ended Ally’s 3-1 day.
She was behind in every single match and came through in the third period in the first three to earn her time in the spotlight.
“Those matches were not my best wrestling this year but I did come back from them,” she said. “My first two I wasn’t wrestling that well. I was proud of my third one.”
In the opener, Williams pinned LaPorte junior Alexis Hopkins 58 seconds into the third period. It took Williams 12 seconds longer than that to pin Michigan City sophomore Damani Edgington then she survived herself and Snyder to lock up second place.
On the modest side, Williams doesn’t walk around boasting about being in the best condition of her life. It’s obvious without her calling attention to it. She wrestled at 145 last season and the fact that she fell behind three times and won in the third period vouches for her stamina.
She was not alone on the team in staging comebacks, she just had the most.
“It’s very good,” 115-pound sectional champion MJ Scharp said. “We condition really hard all season. We’ve had morning practices that are all conditioning, so it’s all running and working out the whole time. They’re at 6 a.m., two days a week. And I wasn’t there for the preseason conditioning because I was playing soccer.”
Williams was there for it, as well as the morning sessions.
The better the physical stamina, the better the mental and vice versa. They are inextricably linked.
“We are taught to not give up anything,” Williams said. “What our team has gotten better at is being in the right positioning and not being so floppy because a lot of us were floppy and we wouldn’t know how to keep our weight centered. We’re all better at keeping our weight centered, if that makes sense, and knowing where to go. So even when we get down, we know how to reverse it because we’re learning new moves and we have more conditioning.”
Will Scharp, father of MJ and 140-pound sectional champion Alice, is an assistant to head coach Chris Richardson.
“The one thing that Chris and I have always told them was just to believe in yourself,” Coach Scharp said. “And the best thing that they can do is don’t lose that belief just because it’s the third period and you’re down. l know the girls will not like me to say this because they might think I’ll make them run more, but we’re always working to be the best conditioned team out there. Every practice we do conditioning for at least 20 minutes. And it starts showing on the mat when we can outlast all the other girls and mentally we’re able to outlast all the other girls.”
Slow growth is real growth.
“I was the only one who didn’t make it out my freshman year,” Williams said. “Third last year. Second this year. Climbing the ladder.”
The next match for Williams (18-7) is Saturday morning vs. Munster sophomore Karbella Rodriguez (25-10) at the Plymouth regional. Other matches, with the Chesterton wrestler listed first: 115: Freshman MJ Scharp (26-6) vs. Merrillville freshman Lorielle Thomas (18-15); 140: Sophomore Alice Scharp (17-2) vs. Central Noble junior Eliana Antunez (16-9); 145: junior Arti Haney (23-8) vs. Glenn junior Miah Lichtenbarger (12-5).
The top four wrestlers in the field of 16 in each of the 14 weight classes advance to the state finals.