High school

For Marshall, her wrestling journey started in middle school.

At the time, she was a natural athlete without a sport she truly loved.

“I was good at a lot of things,” Marshall said. “But I never found anything that I wanted to be great at.”

That all changed when her long distance coach asked her to try out for the Lewisville High School wrestling team. At first Marshall refused. She’d never wrestled and didn’t plan on starting.

Her coach then made her a deal. If she attended tryouts, he’d buy her the biggest bag of Skittles he could find. Marshall immediately accepted. In her first time wrestling, Marshall beat a varsity athlete. She had earned her Skittles and secured herself a spot on the team.

The learning curve was steep at first for Marshall. Competing against players who’d been wrestling for years made her feel like she was constantly playing catch up.

However she quickly realized she couldn’t compare herself to those players. Instead she focused on her own self improvement.

“It was hard but I was naturally athletic, and sometimes what took them to do in five years I could do in two weeks,” Marshall said.

By her junior year, Marshall began feeling more confident. That season, she still had multiple meets where coaches told her that if she had got out of her own head she would’ve won.

The hard work that season paid off and she made it to the state championship, but the round before the finals was tough. She made multiple mistakes and was barely able to keep going. But she made it to the final match, and wrestled with nothing held back. She wasn’t trying to have the perfect win. She wasn’t going to let anybody get in her way.

Marshall defeated her opponent to win the state championship match.

“It was everything that I wanted it to be,” Marshall said. “When I finally won, it was just relief that I did it, I accomplished it, I had faith in myself, and I accomplished so many things on the way.”