Veteran Chesterton wrestler Ally Williams starts her junior season with the fastest pin of her career: 28 seconds

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Nobody wants to catch the flu, but for Chesterton junior Ally Williams, it just might have amounted to a blessing in disguise for her wrestling career.
Williams wrestled at 145 last season and opened this season at 130 Tuesday night in the Trojans’ 22-18 win over visiting Bishop Noll.
The weight loss was not by design, she said.
“I actually got the flu last year and I lost a ton of weight, then just was like working out and stuff and my weight hasn’t moved back up,” Williams said. “I stayed lighter.”
Quicker, she looked terrific in dominating her first opponent of the season from the start and scoring a pin in 28 seconds.
“I definitely feel better,” she said. “I like being at the top end of my weight class, as opposed to last year when I was like 10 pounds under my weight class. So, it’s definitely an advantage for me.”
This is Williams’ third season in the CHS wrestling program, so she was in the program when it was an emerging sport until it was granted full IHSAA status last season. At the beginning she had to wrestle
against boys at times in practice. Now that there are 13 wrestlers in the girls program, that no longer is an issue, and they have their own space, the alcove in the fieldhouse.
Andrew Trevino remains the director of both wrestling programs and Chris Richardson is serving as head coach of the girls, assisted by Will Scharp, promoted from the middle school ranks.
“That was my fastest match. We’re working on being aggressive this year, which is something I have not been good at in past years,” Williams said after her 28-second pin. “The coaches have had us doing stance and motion drills. When we were working with the guys, they just had us working more on you just need to be better, you need to do all these hard workouts, but our coaches are focusing more on technique with us, and it is helping us a lot with the wrestling in general and knowing what to do, as opposed to, ‘I’m stronger than you, so I’m going to try to smush you.’”
Williams said she has seen improvement from all the returning wrestlers and a committed approach from the new ones. She was particularly complimentary of sophomore Lauren Orsburn, who won her match by major decision, 9-0.
“We definitely all have improved this year,” Williams said. “I’ve seen it with the girls and I thought Lauren was super aggressive tonight. We are partners at practice so we’ve been working on that with each other as well.”