Tonganoxie senior Stella Bradley started her time in high school knowing that she wanted to compete as a student-athlete, but did not have her preference of sports completely locked down in the same way as many of her classmates did.

Bradley had competed in cheerleading since she was 11, but she decided to make a change heading into her first year of high school. She decided she’d rather join the dance team.

It was not exactly a hard choice for Bradley to make the switch. That same year her older sister Bailey Bradley was hired by the school district to be the dance team’s head coach.

The younger Bradley had already been helping teach dance at Bailey’s School of Dance, a studio which the older Bradley opened in 2020. Plus, many of Bradley’s friends from her years as a cheerleader had already made the jump to dance.

But it was another sport that she picked up as a sophomore that required a bigger leap into the unknown for Bradley.

This new sport did have many of the same appeals as joining the dance team, even if people might not make that connection immediately. Bradley decided to join Tonganoxie’s girls wrestling team.

Bradley had originally been interested in giving wrestling a try back in middle school.

“I was a wrestling manager in middle school for the boys, but my mom didn't want me to wrestle, so I just waited,” Bradley said. “I really wanted to do it, but at that time in middle school there wasn’t a girls team.”

Her mother also did not like the idea of her daughter joining such a physical and aggressive sport.

“Just wait until you get into high school and then you can do it,” Bradley recalls her mom’s stance back then.

But when Bradley reached high school, she had her own reservations about stepping onto the mat at that time.

“My freshman year I just didn't end up doing it because I only wanted to do dance,” Bradley said. “I was kind of scared as a freshman. I didn't wanna try anything else besides dance.”

By the time she reached her sophomore year, a lot of her friends were already wrestling. Then her school made a move that helped make the prospect of joining the wrestling team a more enticing option.

Tonganoxie hired Adam Ludwin to become the head coach for the girls program. In previous years, the head coach of the boys team ran both programs.

Ludwin, who has spent the last two years serving as an assistant coach for the Baker University women's wrestling program, won two high school wrestling state championships in Arizona before going on to be a a four-year starter on the Fort Hays State men's team. 

Seeing her school invest in the girls program in that way helped push her toward giving wrestling a shot.

“I just tried it out and I ended up really liking it, so I stuck with it,” Bradley said.

During that first season as a sophomore, Bradley did not have her goals on the mat really fleshed out at all.

“I didn't really have any goals, I was just trying not to lose,” she said.

Sure, Bradley hoped to make it to state that year, but it was not something that was going to devastate her if it didn’t happen. Ultimately, her sophomore campaign would end two wins away from punching her ticket to state at 125.

“It doesn't seem like a big difference, but when you're wrestling them it feels a lot different,” she said.
 

Looking back now, Bradley could not even recall how that sophomore campaign ended, other than a state appearance was just out of reach.

Her experience on the dance team that season remained far more memorable.

In 2022, Bradley had her first state experience with the Tonganoxie dance team competing at the KSHSAA Gameday Dance Showcase. 

Her team reached finals by earning the fourth highest score in the prelims. Topeka Hayden and Independence separated themselves as the top two teams, but Tonganoxie trailed the next best score in Bishop Miege by just three points. 

Hayden maintained its distance to take first place with a score of 89.67, but Independence slipped back a bit with their final performance. The Bulldogs still pulled off a second-place finish with a score of 83.80. 

Bishop Miege, however, could not maintain its position in third to bring home the final team trophy. Instead, the Stags slid back to fifth-place finish with a 80.50, just ahead of sixth-place Fort Scott at 79.37. 

Ottawa, which earned a spot in the finals by earning the sixth and last opening, delivered a much stronger performance in the finals to rocket up the leaderboard with a 81.73 score.

But it was Bradley and her Tonganoxie teammates who would celebrate with the third-place state trophy after scoring a 81.87 to narrowly edge out the Cyclones.

Tonganoxie followed up by finishing fifth in 2023. The team, now under new head coach Sidney Murphy-Hanf, looked poised to reach the finals for the third straight year, but the team landed at the back end of a group of three teams which finished less than a point apart in a battle for the last two finalist spots during this year’s Gameday Showcase. Tonganoxie was edged out for the sixth spot by Mulvane, which went on to take third.

Bradley said she was surprised by the team missing the finals cut, especially after how well the team had performed previously.

“We did so good that we thought that for sure we would make it back,” she said. “Then whenever our coach was looking at it and she said we didn't, I didn't believe her. I was like, ‘What? How?’

“I went and looked and then when I realized that we actually weren’t on the list, it was pretty upsetting.”

That experience she had in dance, seeing success first create joy before finally delivering a gut punch based on falling short of increased expectations, is something Bradley would also deal with on the wrestling mat.

After finishing 29-15 wrestling at 125 as a sophomore, Bradley took a big step forward with her performance as a junior last season. She made the move down to 115, a weight cut that she described as not too difficult as Bradley was already wrestling light compared to most of her opponents in the bigger weight class.

Bradley quickly noticed a difference with how she stacked up.

“It doesn't seem like a big difference, but when you're wrestling them it feels a lot different,” she said.

Bradley would rack up a 35-8 record on her way to a sixth-place finish at 4-1A state. Of her eight losses, only two were against wrestlers who would not go on to medal at state. She earned 11 of her wins over nine wrestlers who are currently ranked in the top six in their classification’s weight class this season.
With her late start in wrestling and a background in dance, Bradley feels like her style differs a lot from most of her opponents who have more experience on the mat. 

This became even more clear when she faced off with somebody who she feels like has a similarly unorthodox style. In last year’s Frontier League tournament, Bradley faced off with Eudora’s Kyleigh Musick. Musick, a 2024 graduate, wrestled all four years of high school, but had a soccer background that informed her style when she took to the mat.

“Most girls are just more technical, but this girl kind of wrestled like me,” she said. “We were kind of just rolling around. We got a whole bunch of reversals and it was just different compared to anyone else I've wrestled.”
 

Musick turned a series of reversals into a nearfall late in the first period to take a 9-2 advantage. Bradley closed the gap with a similar sequence to start the second before closing out with a pin late in that period to bring home her first league title.

When Musick had her on the ropes, Bradley recalls her coach giving her simple advice.

“Adam was just telling me to breathe and that I could do it, and I was just trying to get it done,” she said.

While Ludman spent much of the match in the referee’s ear arguing scoring on behalf of his wrestler, Bradley remained focused on figuring out how to turn her next reversal into a quick victory. She recalls Musick putting her in a headlock, only for Bradley to spin around to put her opponent on her back to earn the pin.

Bradley described that close match as a good experience for her as a wrestler. It’s also one where the interaction with her coach helped build up her confidence going forward.

“I feel like he will always just say, ‘We believe in you, you just got to believe in yourself,’” Bradley recalled of their conversation after the match. “That helps me dig a little bit deeper and find the win, hopefully most of the time, because sometimes it’s just in my head. It’s all mental and he just has to tell me, ‘Just do what you always do and it’ll be fine,’ and usually it works.”

That helped her stay focused at regionals as she entered the semifinals of regionals staring down a tough match against Rossville’s Keera Lacock. In a rematch of their first-place match at the Ladycat Classic earlier in the year, where Lacock won via pin late in the first period, Bradley knew she was in for a battle.

At first, Bradley got anxious thinking about going up against Lacock. But her fear quickly gave way to calm.

“I was just like, ‘It’s fine, it doesn’t really matter,’” she said of her thoughts at the time. “I’m just going to try my best because I knew if I lost, I was going to have to wrestle the Eudora girl again, which I know that she’s pretty tough too.”

Her mindset helped Bradley overcome an early 4-0 deficit, including a nearfall late in the first period. Bradley earned a reversal early in the second period to finish off her own 5-0 run to take the lead before ultimately pinning Lacock to advance to the regional finals for the first time.

“It was really exciting because my team was all there supporting me and I was really happy about that,” she said. “Then after I beat her, I knew that I had to wrestle (Oskaloosa’s) Holly (Thacher), which I knew was also gonna be pretty tough. But I beat her one time before that, so I thought I could still do it again.”

Bradley and Thacher had traded victories in the regular season. Just like in her semifinals match, Bradley found herself trailing early as Thacher earned a pair of first-period takedowns to take a 4-1 lead. Thacher earned another takedown in the second, but a pair of escapes for Bradley kept the score from getting out of hand. 

Thacher went up 7-3 after scoring a penalty point early in the third, but Bradley quickly turned things around by taking Thacher to the mat and putting her into a half nelson. Bradley earned the pin to win a regional title.

“It was that same thing like Adam and (assistant coach) Parker (Ast), once I got on top, they were like, “You can do it, believe in yourself,” she said.

With that win, Bradley headed to her first trip to state with a lot of momentum and confidence. She earned a pair of pins to reach the state semifinals, where Bradley faced off with Oakley’s Kylee Hodges.

Both wrestlers worked to a scoreless stalemate in the first period of their match, but Hodges built up a 5-0 lead with a couple of nearfalls in the second. She started the third with an escape before a stalling penalty against Bradley and a takedown in the final minute polished off a 8-0 major decision victory for Hodges.

“She was able to just control my wrist the whole time,” she said. “She just had my wrist and so I wasn't able to get on the ground and scramble around. We were just on our feet the whole time, pretty much.”
 

Bradley’s confidence took a big blow from the loss, setting off her second losing streak of the season. In a rubber match with Lacock, Bradley suffered a loss via pin early in the second period of her consolation semifinals match. Bradley could not turn things around in her fifth-place match as Fort Scott’s Jerri Smith scored a pin over her late in the first period.

Bradley’s tough stretch looked very similar to her finish at the Christmas Clash toward the beginning of that season. 

In that tournament, Bradley lost her semifinal match by 16-2 major decision against Junction City’s Bree Villanueva, an reigning state champion who went undefeated the previous season until finally losing in the state finals. Bradley ended up dropping a 13-11 decision against Russell’s Mya Trevino before Holcomb’s Jaylee Santana delivered Bradley a third straight loss by pinning her midway through the first period of their fifth-place match.

Those would be the only two losses that season against wrestlers who would not reach the podium at state. Additionally, Bradley had already defeated Trevino by pin in the second round of that tournament and would pin her again in the first period of her opening round match at state.

Obviously the quality of opponent factored in for her final two state matches, but Bradley admits both three-loss stretches were due to her having a hard time recovering from a tough loss and pushing through to the finish on the backside of the bracket.

While she had ample opportunity to regroup after her setback at the Christmas Clash, her state experience gave her a tough sendoff to a breakout junior campaign.

“That was pretty hard,” she said. “I was pretty tired from the day before, so that didn’t help and I was just ready to be done.”

She wanted to be done with that state tournament, but Bradley definitely did not want to just move on from that experience.

“It motivated me a lot,” she said. “It motivated me to practice in the summer too. I did a lot of stuff in the summer, which I feel like also helped me for this season and made me just want to be as good as I can this year since it’s my last year.”

Bradley was particularly motivated by that loss in the state semifinals, where she could never force Hodges into wrestling in a position that benefited her own strengths. Bradley picked up techniques to combat opponent’s who are prolific at dominating matches via wrist control.

“I learned how to get my wrists free in different ways if they're just holding onto them,” she said. “If they're just holding onto them, I'll use one of my knees and I'll just put my knee up in between our hands so it'll break their wrist (to get) my hand off, or I'll just roll my wrists around and grab theirs.”

By keeping those strategies in the back of her mind and improving her hand fighting skills in practice, Bradley feels like she’s better prepared for taking on similar opponents in the future.

She put in some of that practice over the summer as she learned freestyle for the first time and competed at nationals in Fargo, North Dakota.

“I think the biggest thing that I got from it was just my takedowns getting a lot better,” she said. “Sophomore year, I didn't even take people down really. I kind of just sprawl and go behind. Over the summer, I got a lot better at taking shots, which has helped me a lot this year already, especially with it being three points now.”

In each of the last three seasons, Bradley’s team kicked off the year by competing in the Spring Hill Invitational once again. As a sophomore, Bradley took first at that tournament wrestling at 125, although it was in the B-bracket. When she returned to Spring Hill last year, Bradley took first again by winning the A-bracket at 115.
 

Bradley repeated that result to start this season, earning pins in all four of her matches on Dec. 7 at Spring Hill, including a pin midway through the third period of her finals match against Olathe Northwest senior Emmy Keller. Keller currently ranks third in 6A at 110.

The week after that her team returned to the Christmas Clash. 

Bradley picked up a pair of pins to reach the semifinals of that event. She suffered her first loss of the season in that round, losing via first-period pin against Garden City sophomore Marina Loera. In KWCA’s final rankings in December, Loera held the No. 3 spot for 115 in 6A. Bradley had defeated Loera’s twin sister Crystal twice last year, both in championship matches of tournaments last January.

Unlike last year, Bradley had a strong rebound after going to the backside of the bracket in this event, earning her own first-period pin in the consolation semifinals over Goddard freshman Brooklyn Simpson. She followed up with a 16-0 tech fall over Kallan Rothchild of Wakeeney Trego/Quinter in the third-place match for 115. Simpson currently ranks sixth in 5A while Rothchild ranks second in 3-1A.

With her history at that event, Bradley knew she wanted to do whatever it took to avoid a repeat of that result.

“My goal for that was just to do better than I did the year before, which I did,” she said. “But I was really nervous going into my semi-finals match, which didn't help anything. Once I lost that match, I knew I wanted to come back and get third.”

Her resilience helped her take momentum into the Basehor-Linwood’s Ladycat Classic the next week. After taking runner-up at that event last year, Bradley knew she wanted to the finals and get the job done this time around.

Bradley earned a pair of pins in a total match time of 1:13 in the opening rounds before defeating three straight ranked wrestlers to accomplish exactly that.
She started off with a win over Dodge City sophomore Miranda Alvarez in the quarterfinals, building up a 5-1 advantage before closing out the match with a second-period pin. Bradley trailed early in her semifinal against Topeka Seaman senior Koti Best, but she dominated the start of the second to earn a 13-7 lead before her opponent forfeited after suffering an injury. 

In a return to the finals, Bradley made quick work of Newton junior Avery Hinojos by scoring two first-period takedowns on the way to a victory via pin.

Although she continues to gain confidence in her abilities on the mat, Bradley said her big wins have still not eliminated all of her anxiety, particularly regarding the pre-match jitters she faces.

“It builds my confidence a little, but every match I'm still nervous because it can always change,” she said. “But it makes me a little bit confident because I know I've already done it once, I can do it again.”

Bradley specifically pointed to how she traded victories with Thacher and Lacock last year as examples of why she can’t get too confident following big wins. She also sees that anxiety as a strength rather than a weakness.

“I think it helps,” she said. “It's scary, but it's gonna help me. Then the adrenaline hits and then it's just fun.”

Bradley admits that the prospect of possibly winning a state championship is very intriguing, but she also doesn’t want to set that high mark as a be-all-end-all goal for her senior season. Bradley remains focused on maintaining a strong record with a lot of wins and not too many losses.

“I just want to try my best,” she said. “I'll still be proud of how I've done, even if I don't get that, because I've still come a long way in just three years. I'm still gonna be proud of how I do, no matter what.”

For now, Bradley will keep her goals set to a few key outings during the regular season. One of those is set for the team's senior night dual on Thursday, Jan. 9 as Tonganoxie hosts Basehor-Linwood. 

She is set to wrestle senior Karla Barrios, a wrestler who Bradley has never faced before but still knows very well.

“I've been kinda waiting to get to wrestle her because she used to go to Tongie and we used to be friends, so I just think it'll be fun,” she said.

If she can keep having fun while maintaining the right balance of confidence and anxiety, Bradley hopes that’ll be the recipe for a great finish to her high school wrestling career.