Dustin Cloud wasn’t initially sold on the idea of his daughter Gloria becoming a wrestler.
Four-and-a-half years later, at the tender age of 9, Gloria Cloud is a national champion. The fourth-grader at Taylorsville Elementary won the 10-and-under girls 65-pound division in last month’s Girls Folkstyle National Championships in Coralville, Iowa.
“At first, 5-year-old little girl wanting to join wrestling, I was immediately in a ‘No,'” Dustin said. “But once she got out there and saw that she didn’t care about the competitiveness, she was out there purely to have fun. It was a difference maker, knowing she was just out there to have fun and not necessarily to get beat up or beat up on people.”
Since she took up the male-dominated sport, Gloria has usually been the one handing out the punishment. She’s won seven girls state championships and two state titles competing against boys.
With no state tournament this year, Cloud went straight to nationals.
“It was the same girls, but it was even tougher, because all of us came to win,” she said.
Cloud had been to two previous Folkstyle National Championships, finishing fourth at 50 pounds in 2018 and fourth at 55 pounds 2019. Last year’s nationals was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year, Cloud bumped up to 65 pounds and brought home the title.
“It wasn’t easy because all national championships are harder than other tournaments,” she said. “It was super hard. So I was pretty happy.”
Cloud cited practice at home and with the Columbus North Wrestling Club as the main reason for her success. She practices two to three times a week for an hour-and-a-half with the North Wrestling Club.
“We normally practice the basics — shots, brawls, different basic moves,” she said. “At first, it was hard, but then once I started practicing more and more, it started getting a little bit easier.”
Gloria first became interested in wrestling after her brother Joseph took up the sport. Joseph, now 13 and an eighth-grader at Northside Middle School, won a Tri-County championship this year.
“We saw a flyer about wrestling, and my brother wanted to join,” she said. “So the first time we watched him, the next day, I was like, ‘I want to wrestle.'”
Dustin is an assistant coach for the Columbus North Wrestling Club. He described watching his kids wrestle now as “nerve-racking.”
“There’s times when it is extreme joy just to watch her go out there and have fun whether she wins or loses with a big smile on her face,” Dustin said. “Then, there’s other times when they lose that close one by one or two points, and you feel kind of like you failed them as a coach because you could have showed them something else that might have got them that extra little bit.”
Within the past few years, the Indiana High School Wrestling Coaches Association began sponsoring a girls high school state tournament. Women’s wrestling is an emerging sport in the NCAA, and Dustin thinks it could begin sanctioning tournaments within a couple of years.
Gloria is planning to wrestle in high school and then in college.
“I want to go to Penn State and join the wrestling team,” she said.
Her mother Diana is thrilled that Gloria has found an activity that not only she excels at, but that fits her personality.
“I was excited for her,” Diana said. “It’s not usually what girls do, and Gloria has always been her own person. Her stepping out on a mat was kind of something she would do.”
