[crowd cheering, yelling encouragement]
[ref blows whistle]
Gold medal wrestler Dan Gable said,
"Once you've wrestled, everything in life is easy."
- Here you go, pin him, pin him! [cheering]
- It's a sport measured
by passion, intensity, and strength.
Agie Mai Sow has all of those traits in spades.
Agie's passion led her to join
the Sun Prairie High School wrestling team.
- Growing up,
I used to watch wrestling on TV all the time
with my dad,
and we always joked around about how that could be me one day.
- Jim Nelson: Sit-ups, sit-ups!
- Her coach, Jim Nelson,
says Agie matches her teammates' intensity
every day.
- She comes to practice ready to work hard.
She just puts in her work.
She doesn't complain, and she's just a pleasure to work with
because, you know, we don't have to worry about...
Every time she's in the room,
we know she's going to be pushing herself hard.
- He says Agie shows strength
both on and off the mat.
- That's it, Ag!
- She's trained to be competitive,
but there have been challenges.
At five years, old Agie was diagnosed with an eye disease.
- So, I have a rare eye condition
called retinitis pigmentosa,
and it's basically
where you lose light in the back of your eye.
- It affects the retina and can eventually cause full blindness.
But Agie still has some limited vision.
- Agie Mai Sow: When someone is demonstrating a move,
I can kind of see what they're doing,
but I have to be able to, like, feel the move
to know, like, how to do it.
- There are rules to make sure she wrestles safely.
Opponents must stay in contact with Agie at all times.
- Nelson: When they start, they have to have one hand on top,
and one hand on bottom,
and they're just touching hands.
- Agie says her teammates have been nothing but supportive.
- Agie Mai Sow: We all look out for each other
and we support each other at each other's matches
and they, they're-- they're great
[ref blows whistle] - LET'S GO, AG!
- On this night, she'd get a chance to show off her skills.
Sun Prairie was part of a multi-team match in Madison.
Agie drew an opponent from Middleton High School.
- Hip, hip, hip, HIP, hip, hip, hip!
- It didn't take long
for her to grab the upper hand,
trying to pin his shoulders to the floor.
After a short struggle,
[ref blows whistle, crowd cheers]
success.
Agie was victorious.
- After I got the pin, everyone was, like, cheering,
and it just felt amazing.
It shows that, like, all the hard work I've been doing
during practice is paying off.
- No matter how many times a wrestler gets knocked down,
they have to pick themselves up off the mat.
Agie knows how to do that as well as anyone.
- Nelson: It's always great to see kids progress
and wrestlers progress on your team,
but first, the most important thing is
hard work pays off in real life,
and we want her to understand that.
We, you know, are always pulling
for her to be successful after high school
and after wrestling is all done.
- Agie plans to become an electrical engineer.
She knows everything in life won't actually be easy,
even if she's a wrestler.
But with the right attitude,
she can grapple with anything that comes her way.
- No matter all the problems you have,
there's always a positive way out.
Like, it gets hard sometimes, and yeah, that's life,
but there's the positive side to it,
and you just have to stay hopeful.
[crowd murmuring, ref blows whistle] - YEAH!
[cheers and applause]