Newport wrestler blazes trail to CIF state meet

H

aley Datt is not your typical beach girl, even though she has lived by the ocean all her life.

Two years ago, she moved from Maui to Newport Beach. She wanted to take up a new sport, one that did not involve the water. The water in the sport in which she was interested would come in the form of heavy sweat.

Wrestling is what Datt, 18, planned to do and Hawaii is where wrestling piqued her interest. She watched the girls’ wrestling team practice at Lahainaluna High, where she went to school as a freshman and sophomore.

“They looked like bad girls,” Datt said with a smile.

When she left Lahaina and returned to Newport Beach, her original hometown, Datt was going into her junior year at a new school. The school would be Newport Harbor, from where her older sister, Chelsea, graduated eight years ago.

She didn’t want to be the next Datt to play water polo for the Sailors. One of the first things Datt did was ask if Newport Harbor had a girls’ wrestling team. The school had only one team, made up of boys and one girl.

Wrestling boys wasn’t an issue for Datt. It was a different story for her parents, Jack and Jodi.

“At first they were a little bit scared because they knew that there was no girls’ team, and I’d be wrestling with the boys,” Datt said, “but once they started seeing that I could hang with the boys, they were really excited.”

It took Datt a year and a half to learn how to wrestle. Whether it has been against a boy or a girl in her senior year, Datt has proven she can more than just compete on the mat.

Datt is a 5-foot-4, 111-pounder trailblazer, the first wrestler from Newport Harbor to advance to the CIF State girls’ wrestling championships, as well as the first from the Newport-Mesa Unified.

The state tournament for girls is in its sixth year. Datt is traveling to the two-day tournament in Visalia on Thursday, along with another Newport Harbor girl wrestler, Cheyenne Stooks.

The two are arriving a day early. Stooks isn’t going to Visalia for the scenery. Her job is to get Datt ready for the tournament, which starts Friday at the Visalia Convention Center.

Stooks, a 106-pound junior, is Datt’s workout partner. Having Stooks around is something for which Datt is thankful because she doesn’t have to ask a stranger at state if she’s available for a workout.

“It’s kind of like weird sometimes,” Datt said of having to ask, “‘Oh, hey! Do you have a partner?’”

That was the position Datt was in Saturday at the CIF Southern Section championships at Roosevelt High in Eastvale. Stooks wasn’t around. She failed to make it to the second day of the tournament, the precursor to state.

The first day for Datt didn’t start well. She got a bad draw, facing the No. 1 seed, Corona’s Sugey Ceja, and Ceja beat Datt, 9-1.

Datt had a feeling Ceja was one of the top wrestlers at the tournament, but Harbor Coach Dominic Bulone told her that wasn’t the case.

“They like tricked me at first,” Datt said of her coaches. “I, like, knew she was the first seed. I was like, ‘Oh, this is the girl who is the first seed.’ They’re like, ‘No, this is not the girl.’”

Bulone tried to keep Datt from freaking out before she faced Ceja, and the move worked. Datt made sure Ceja didn’t pin her the same way she did her next two opponents.

By losing the first match, Datt had a long road ahead of her. She won her next three matches on that Friday, staying alive. The following day, she won two more in a row, guaranteeing her one of the top eight entries to state.

The last two matches Datt lost. She went 5-3 with two pins and placed sixth in the tournament, making history.

The people Datt credits for her success are her coaches, Bulone and David Garcia, and the wrestlers, Michael Craft, a 113-pounder, and Stooks, she has trained with all season.

Seeing Stooks when Datt first came out for the wrestling team as a junior helped.

“It kind of made me feel, like, comfortable knowing that other girls were doing this, and I wasn’t the only one,” said Datt, who became the second girl in the wrestling room.

At first, the boys tried to create a rivalry between the two girls.

“‘Oh, Cheyenne! You got competition now! Someone’s going to take your spot!’” Bulone said is what his boys yelled. “They were teasing Cheyenne about it, even though [Datt] was brand new and didn’t really know anything yet.”

Datt has become such a standout wrestler that one boy wanted no part of her last month.

Newport Harbor played host to Los Alamitos in Sunset League action. Bulone said a Los Alamitos coach told him that his wrestler didn’t like to wrestle girls.

“He said, he’ll do it, but if he doesn’t need to, he won’t do it,” Bulone said. “He [and Datt were] the last match in the dual meet, and [the Los Al Griffins] were going to win the dual meet, so they just didn’t send him out. [Datt] was mad.”

So were Datt’s parents.

“My parents, like, came out to come watch me and everything,” Datt said. “We were sitting there for like an hour, watching everyone else wrestle, and then I was the last one. [I] like shook [the Los Alamitos wrestler’s] hand and everything before the match. I was like waiting on the mat and I put on my ankle bracelet on, and I was ready to go. Then I was like looking at [his] teammates, and they’re like, ‘Oh, he’s not wrestling.’ I was like, ‘Wait. Why?’ My dad was like, ‘You should’ve called him out.’”

Datt won by forfeit, one of three times she has won in that fashion.

She enters state with an 18-11 overall record. She’s 12-4 against girls and 6-7 against boys.

Now Bulone can see why the Los Alamitos wrestler didn’t want to go up against Datt.

“She and Michael Craft throughout the season have been kind of equal. They always have close matches, one or two points [have decided them], and Michael Craft pinned that [Los Alamitos] kid in the league final [to place third],” Bulone said. “I do suspect that if they had wrestled, Haley would’ve beat him.”