Cleveland senior Piper Fowler is one of the country’s top high school wrestlers at one of the nation’s top girls’ programs, but when her prep career began, she had no idea how far the Lady Blue Raiders would go on the mat over the next four years.
Fowler won the 152-pound girls’ championship at the TSSAA traditional state tournament to cap her freshman campaign, but she was one of just two medalists that year for the Lady Blue Raiders as they finished seventh in a 10-team field.
While the season was over for the team, for the fledgling program, it was a start — not the finish. The Lady Blue Raiders returned to the Jones Wrestling Center on their school’s campus with a desire to get better every day as they trained with the next season and the long haul in mind.
Carried by a rigorous work ethic, the Lady Blue Raiders have won the past two TSSAA girls’ state traditional titles and will take aim at their third in a row later this winter, when they will also try to win their third straight girls’ state duals championship after finishing third at the inaugural event in 2022.
Cleveland’s dominance at the state level includes having nine medalists and scoring 178 team points — 65 more than the runner-up — at last year’s traditional tourney, but the recognition extends outside of Tennessee for the Lady Blue Raiders, who are ranked fourth in the country by Flo Wrestling behind Wyoming Seminary (Pennsylvania), Bixby (Oklahoma) and Olentangy Orange (Ohio).