This past week North High wrestler Rodah Bengi took home the championship in her weight class of 115 at the 6A-5A Girls State Wrestling meet. With winning that final match, Rodah finished her junior season of wrestling undefeated, 40-0. Rodah shared what is feels like to be a State Champion, “It feels great knowing everything I did up until this moment was all worth it.”

Getting to this point has been a journey for Rodah and she gave a little insight on how its been for her, “It’s been a tough physical and mental battle. I’ve been working all summer with a few coaches, and with coach Burgess at summer conditioning on getting stronger.” Rodah also shared how important mental health was for her, ” While running cross country it helped me strengthen my mentality with coach Nigg. We had lots of team talks on how our mentality can affect our performance, I started changing my mindset and way of thinking. Believing and imagining the outcome I want.”

Rodah has had multiple people in her corner all along but mainly coach Burgess. She shared how he helped her all season long, “Burgess has always helped me prepare by always pushing and motivating me to always perform at my best. He gives workouts to do on our breaks and always helps find specific moves that works for each of us.”

With Burgess having knowledge about the sport of wrestling, Rodah had plenty of that passed on to her, “He’s very good at analyzing situations and always findings ways to get better.”

Rodah is only a junior so she expressed how thoughts about next years wrestling season, “I hope I get even better and smarter as a wrestler. I want to perform at an even higher level and just continue to get better and win state again!”

She is really soaking in all the moments she’s had this season and happy about her championship.