Hinsdale South’s 35-0 Callie Carr, after just missing medaling last year, holds high hopes ‘I need more’

Callie Carr can count on the same sage words from her grandpa prior to every wrestling match.

“Six-inch mat between your ears,” Carr said, repeating his saying. “It’s about being mentally tough.”

The Hinsdale South junior did not think she had that last year. Despite qualifying for the state wrestling meet both of her first two years of high school, Carr believed she underperformed, that her true skills hadn’t come out. She lost in the blood round her sophomore year, a win shy of medaling.

“It’s not a good feeling,” Carr said. “I need more.”

Carr appears poised for much more this weekend in Bloomington. She carries a 35-0 record into the IHSA state meet after winning the sectional title in Schaumburg last weekend.

The state meet starts Friday and concludes Saturday at Grossinger Motors Arena.

Carr, for her part, is not taking anything for granted, even with her gaudy record. She is one of two girls with undefeated records in the 155-pound bracket, Plainfield South’s Teagan Aurich at the opposite end.

“I just want to get to the next point,” Carr said. “I’m not overlooking anybody. The past two years going into it, I kind of blew it. I feel like I’m a whole different person. I’m excited for it. A lot of nerves, but I’m pumped.”

It shouldn’t surprise that Carr, an all-around athlete that played quarterback for Hinsdale South’s flag football team and also has done softball, would excel in wrestling.

Her grandpa wrestled at Oak Park-River Forest. She has three older brothers, two of whom wrestled.

Carr was determined that she could do it watching one of her brother’s meets while she was in the eighth grade. She sold her family at her parents' anniversary dinner.

“Sitting down at dinner, telling my dad can you ask mom and she was like ‘Either you’re all in or you’re all out,‘” Carr said. “I was like I’m all in. They didn’t think I would like it as much as I did.”

Hinsdale South coach Michael Uhlir can confirm that she loves it.

“She loves the fact that it falls on her whether she wins or loses,” he said. “When she goes out there she has a plan. She has multiple moves to counter and to attack in her bag. I believe she just enjoys it so much. It is fun to her. Not even a competition, just fun.”

She dedicated herself to the sport after taking it on. Carr won a boys regional tournament in eighth grade, and credits her coaches and practice partners for pushing her every day. Carr made Fargo Nationals last summer and joined the Gomez Wrestling Academy for the first time last fall.

“It evolves you on your feet more,” she said. “I was always in the room five days a week, running and training. It’s what I wanted.”

Still, harkening back to her grandpa’s words, Carr believes in her mental strength more than anything. She has written down in what amounts to a predictive journal where she plans to be come Friday’s first round, to reaching Saturday’s final day of the tournament.

“Not many people think about talking about the mental aspect of the sport. My whole practice is the mindset of it all. Yea, it’s state, but it’s just another tournament, just another match,” she said.

“You can have the greatest strength in the world against but but if I’m mentally tougher than you and have the technique, that’s what matters.”

Carr’s been the cornerstone to Hinsdale South’s girls program, which had a team for the first time year with nine girls.

“She is just an all-around athlete. She has determination, and she is motivated,” Uhlir said. “She wanted to be the quarterback for the flag football team, she showed me video of her throwing with her dad at the high school football field and they were just darts.

“She is an excellent athlete, a good student, a fun person to be around. Everyone is drawn to her. She is the type of person you want to build a program around.”