WPIAL wrestlers boost Pennsylvania to 1st girls junior national duals title

By: Nathan Breisinger
Sunday, June 30, 2024 | 11:01 AM

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North Allegheny’s Leyna Rumpler has been traveling to Tulsa, Okla. for the past four years to compete with wrestlers from around Pennsylvania in the Air Force Special Warfare Junior National Duals.

This year, however, was different as it was her last trip as a high school athlete after graduating in the spring. This time, she can walk away saying she is a national champion.

Representing the WPIAL, Rumpler, along with Miranda LaJevic (Knoch), Nila Bland (Trinity) and Ana Malovich (Butler) contributed to Pennsylvania Blue’s first national title after advancing through the pool stage as the top seed and ultimately defeating Missouri Blue, 38-31, in the title match June 20.

“I’m never going to get this chance again,” Rumpler said. “I was super excited to lay everything out, do everything I could to help the team, win as many matches as we could and beat as many teams as we could. I knew we had a stacked team. It was going to be tough to stop us and beat us.”

It was a redemption run from last year after the team fell shy of making the championship match.

“A year ago, we had walked out of there with third place and we started putting things in motion of what do we need to do to win the national tournament, and the thing that kept coming back was we needed a team that worked together,” said Dan Heckert, head coach and junior director of the Pennsylvania team.

As Heckert watched his team win, it was especially rewarding to witness Rumpler succeed after coaching her at North Allegheny. Rumpler’s Tigers career concluded with a state championship and gold on the national stage.

“It’s a testament to the work she’s put in to be on that level,” Heckert said. “Most of these girls have been wrestling their whole life, and this is only her fourth year wrestling. It’s a great honor to have one of my own wrestlers there getting to experience the highest of highs. Ending her career dual-meet wise, to see the smile on her face and the joy of her celebrating with her best friends, is a bit of relief on my end to watch her do that.”

Wrestling at 155 pounds, Rumpler won three matches, picking up an all-important pin against Iowa in a tight 37-31 team decision that advanced Pennsylvania past the pool stage.

“It was a different match from all the other ones not just because I won, but it was a different feeling from the way I moved, the way I felt and the way I attacked her,” Rumpler said. “That definitely helped me win. When I saw how close the match was, I was like, ‘Thank God I pinned her because if I didn’t or if the other girls on the team didn’t get their win, we might not have won.’”

With momentum heading into Day 2, adversity suddenly hit when one of the top wrestlers from Pennsylvania, Jordyn Fouse from Bishop McCort, was injured in a bout at 140 against Arizona’s Isis France.

Pennsylvania Blue then found itself in a precarious position when it lost to Colorado in the following match. It needed to beat California to clinch a spot in the championship round.

That’s when two WPIAL wrestlers stepped up with key wins.

“After Jordyn got injured, we were all very devastated that she couldn’t be a part of it, so we wanted to win for her. We brought it up to a different level of wrestling,” LaJevic said.

Bland and LaJevic set the tone with pins at 95 and 100 pounds to start the match.

“After I saw Nila win her match, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, she won, so now I have to win mine to help the team go.’ After I won mine, we were up 10-0. It was just win after win after win and we were on a roll.”

Once in the championship match, Pennsylvania and Missouri battled back and forth. At 115 pounds, Malovich ignited a run of four straight wins.

“We knew with that one, we were going to get behind early just knowing the matchup,” Heckert said. “We have a really potent lineup from 115 all the way up to 140. We knew Ana, who went undefeated all tournament, she did a good job of setting the tone and bringing that momentum back to us.”

It all set up for a critical battle at 235 in which Alyssa Favara of Bishop McCort wrestled above her typical 190-pound weight class. Favara clinched the title with a 30-second fall.

“The heartbreak of losing to Colorado and then turning it around from tears in our eyes to thinking we had given up the national championship to now flipping the script and winning that was just unbelievable. The girls were estatic,” Heckert said.

For those who represented the WPIAL, it meant so much more than just winning a trophy.

“At Tulsa, only a select few get to go and its such a special tournament,” Rumpler said. “Knowing that there were four WPIAL girls all on the same team that won the national championship, it’s really crazy.”

Added LaJevic: “We all train really hard in this area and it’s amazing that we could be a part of such a talented team. All of the hard work we put in trying to get a team to win juniors for the first time and its so impressive to have four girls from the WPIAL be on the team.”

Tags: North Allegheny