AnnMarie Shuler’s older brother told her it would be cool if she tried out for the wrestling team one day.

Shuler was 11 years old at the time and played multiple sports already, so she decided to give it a try in the fifth grade.

On the first day of practice, Shuler didn’t want to go in.

“What if I don’t like it?” she thought to herself.

Her mom reassured her that if that was the case, she wouldn’t have to try it again.

So Shuler walked into practice, and on her first day, she wrestled against another girl named Kelsie Napier, who four years later is now Shuler’s best friend.

“She made it fun and less awkward to wrestle,” Shuler said.

From that moment on, Shuler was sold on the sport.

Now an eighth-grader at Seymour Middle School, Shuler doesn’t have much time to sit and think. She runs cross-country in the fall, wrestles in the winter and does both softball and track and field in the spring.

“I like cross-country and I’ve always had siblings that I’ve rough-housed with,” she said. “I’ve always been active, and I find it very not fun to just lay around all day.”

Wrestling, she says, is now her favorite sport, followed by softball.

One of the hardest workers in the room, Shuler was named one of the team captains this season at SMS.

“We do it to where the peers get to choose,” head coach Andy Wilson said. “Obviously, her peers look up to her. She leads by example in the room.”

On Jan. 30, the IHSWCA Middle School State meet took place, and Shuler had an impressive showing.

In her first match, she lost via an 8-1 decision to Indian Creek’s Elizabeth Dowty, who wound up as the first-place finisher. But after that match, Shuler did everything in her power to win the rest.

In her next match, Shuler pinned Kahlyn Fouty from Whiteland Wrestling Club, and she followed that up with another pinfall over Kynlie Keffer from Wes-Del.

Shuler took home a third-place finish at state, receiving a medal, getting on the podium and being the highest-place finisher for Seymour on the day.

“It was fun,” she said.

Shuler’s sister, Izabellah Long, also placed at the state meet, finishing seventh in her bracket. Then Seymour’s Logan Cunningham finished eighth in his bracket as three Owls placed at state.

Wilson can’t remember the last time, if there was one, that Seymour had this many wrestlers place at the state meet.

“We want to be known as a wrestling school,” he said. “We want to walk into someone else’s gym and people see us and go, ‘There’s Seymour. They’re a good wrestling school.’ I think AnnMarie and those guys placing at state is a good start to that.”

Like when she first started wrestling, Shuler gets nervous before her matches, but once she’s on the mat, those nerves start to fade. She doesn’t listen to any music or anything prior to matches. She just talks to her friends and hangs out to have fun.

The one superstition Shuler has is on meet days, she wears two different socks. One sock has a cherry on it, and the other sock has a flamingo. It’s something she did during her first state meet in cross-country, so it’s a tradition she has kept up with since.

Shuler can come off as shy, but she’s as competitive as anyone on the mat.

“Her biggest thing is her tenacity,” Wilson said. “She’s tough. She does everything to make sure she wins. She definitely doesn’t like to lose.”

Her mom, Danielle Long, noticed this about her from a young age.

“She’s one of those that if you tell her you can’t do it, she’s going to go do it 100 times better,” Long said. “Everything she does, she gives it 100%.”

This isn’t the first time Shuler has placed at state, either. She has done it in prior years, but this was the biggest pool of girls that she has competed against.

“She has placed a few times, but this year was the biggest group of girls,” Long said. “I don’t know if it’s as cool watching her at state as it is watching her against the boys.”

That was one of the larger concerns when Shuler first started wrestling. How would she handle being a male-dominated sport? There have been some instances, like a couple years ago, where some boys refused to wrestle against the girls on Seymour.

But Shuler doesn’t back down from any challenge, and some of her most satisfying victories have come against boys.

“I like the competition, especially going on the mat against the guys who think they’re going to easily beat you and then you get to beat them,” Shuler said. “It was really scary at first, but it’s also really motivating to beat the guys and have fun doing it.”

Her mom feels the same way.

“You see all these boys laugh when she comes up on the mat, but then she gets on the mat, does what she does and wins,” Long said. “Her brother was five years older than her, so she had to be tough. For as long as I can remember, she’s always had that ‘no one is going to keep me down’ mentality.”

The amount of girls in wrestling has been increasing by the years, as well. Like Shuler, her best friend, Kelsie, and her sister, Izabellah, they are just three of multiple girls on the SMS team.

“We have eight to 10 girls,” Wilson said. “We’ve mentioned at the high school level actually starting a girls team, which would be cool. I just think it’s just a tremendous opportunity to enjoy the sport that they’re good at.”

Shuler has every intention once she graduates SMS to try out for the wrestling team at Seymour High School.

She wants to run cross-country in the fall, wrestle in the winter and play softball in the spring. She’s unsure about track and field at SHS just because softball might run into that.

But before any of that, because of her placement at the state meet, Shuler has qualified to be a representative on team Indiana at the regional meet in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on April 15 and 16.

It’s an awesome experience for Shuler, who still has a couple of areas she wants to work on heading into that meet.

“I want to get better with my setting up shots. Sometimes, they can be sloppy. And my pinning combinations is another thing,” she said.

Shuler can look back on her fifth grade self now and be happy that instead of turning around and never going to wrestling practice, she approached it head-on and succeeded — much like how she performs on the mat.

“From year to year, she has improved almost every aspect of wrestling,” Wilson said. “She works really hard. She can outrun or outwork anyone in the room.”