Katie Moore had no idea she was about to find her life’s passion the day she sat on the sidelines watching her younger brother participate in a wrestling club. It was the first day of a five-day wrestling camp and the sport piqued her interest.
“I can do that,” she thought, as she asked her mother to sign her up to join the boys grappling on the mats.
At the end of the camp, the coach asked Katie’s mom, Doreen Tiernan, how long Katie had been a wrestler. To the coach’s astonishment, Tiernan counted off the five days on her fingers. He was shocked to learn she was a rank beginner, telling Tiernan that Katie seemed to be a natural at the sport.
Katie is now a 16-year-old Riverhead High School junior who also happens to compete for the United States Olympic Women’s Wrestling Team. Among future Olympians, she’s ranked number three in her weight class in the country. She won’t be able to compete in the Olympics until 2024 because she’s too young. She has her sights set on the 2028 games in Los Angeles in the 76 kg division.
In high school matches, she always wrestles boys. She said she’s only had very few boys forfeit the match rather than wrestle a girl. At national and world matches she wrestles against women. This weekend, the Wading River teen will be competing in Texas at the World Team trials where she’ll also be signing a letter of commitment to attend Life University in Georgia.
“Life has a great wrestling program,” Katie explained. “It’s a small, science-based school in the Mid-South Conference.”
The science-based part of Life excites Katie as much as the athletics. She’s planning on majoring in biology to facilitate her eventual goal of becoming an orthopedic surgeon. She’s an honors student at the high school, currently holding a 104.74 GPA. She also takes classes twice a week in Suffolk County Community College’s Early College Program where she has a 3.8/4.0 GPA in business, macro-economics and pre-calculus classes.
As if her high school AP classes and college classes weren’t enough, Katie’s a scholar-athlete in five varsity sports, a member of the National Honor Society and the National Foreign Language Honor Society, plays percussion instruments in several school musical ensembles and is working toward her Gold Award in Girl Scouts.
She doesn’t take a break during the summer, either. For the past four summers she’s worked at Indian Island Park’s golf course as a golf instructor teaching children and adults the fundamentals of the game. In her “spare” time, she volunteers at her church, as a coach for Westhampton Youth Wrestling (where it all started) and is a member of the school superintendent’s Round Table.
Traveling to training camps takes her away from school for up to a week at a time, several times a year. She says she makes up the work as soon as she gets back — including any tests she may have missed — so most of her teachers are fine with her absences. Her classmates “find it super fascinating that I am an Olympic candidate but nobody treats me differently. Everyone is definitely super-supportive of my goal.”
“Traveling around the country is expensive. My mom and I pay for everything. We drive if the competitions are fairly local, but we fly if they’re not,” she said. “I am so grateful to my Nan, my brother Xavier and my mom. My Nan takes care of Xavier and Tiffany, my mini-labradoodle, when we’re away. I couldn’t do what I do without all their support.”
“We work as a team. That’s how life is,” her mother agreed, smiling proudly at her daughter.
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