Briggs, Lottie Represent Avila at Women’s Wrestling Nationals
For the second straight season, Avila women's wrestling will send two athletes up north to Jamestown to compete in the sport's biggest event, the 2024 NAIA Women's Wrestling National Championship this weekend in North Dakota: freshman Shannon Briggs and junior Markayla Lottie, Avila's two best wrestlers on the balance of the season, will represent the squad from Kansas City this Friday and Saturday.
Avila sent nearly its full lineup to nationals in year one of the program when women's wrestling was still an invitational sport. When it was officially declared a championship sport by the NAIA before the start of the 2022-23 season, it was clear immediately that the field would become a lot more exclusive and harder for any athlete to qualify for. That's proved true, but even with the more exclusive field Avila has worked to earn two spots on the mat: the Eagles sent two athletes to Jamestown to finish off year two of the pgoram, and will once again send two athletes to close out year three this weekend in North Dakota.
The women's wrestling field is smaller than that of the men's, so this year's NAIA Women's Wrestling Championship will be a two-day event, starting the morning of Friday, March 8, and culminating with the championship bouts the night of Saturday, March 9. Seeds are assigned to the top eight wrestlers in each of the ten weight classes, and first round byes are randomly awarded from there: both Eagle athletes, despite being nationally ranked, are unseeded as they begin their tournament runs.
Markayla Lottie has been a mainstay for this program and has become a nationally known name and face in the sport as she begins to make her third consecutive appearance at an NAIA postseason tournament. Lottie won three of her four matches at the KCAC Championships in late February, including an important victory over Jamestown's Jenna Gerhardt to secure third place in the conference tournament.
That wasn't enough to qualify automatically for nationals, but she was boosted by the fact that she's been featured in every NAIA Coaches' Poll this season, from preseason to final, and she was awarded an at-large bid to the national championship as she strives to exceed her performance from a year ago on this stage.
Lottie will kick off her third straight nationals appearance right at the start of the day on Friday, at 10 AM. There are only two first-round matches in the 116 bracket, and Lottie is in one of them, against Irma Retano of Eastern Oregon, a fellow unseeded wrestler that is not appearing in the final national rankings of the season. The road gets much steeper from there however: if Lottie wins in the first round, her next opponent will be Missouri Baptist's Juliana Diaz, rated the No. 2 wrestler in the weight class and awarded the top seed in this tournament.
If Lottie is the Eagles' mainstay this season then Shannon Briggs is the new kid of the block, and she's immediately established herself as a legitimate force at heavyweight this season as a true freshman. Briggs won three of her matches at the KCAC Championship last month, but that was still only good enough for sixth place.
Even in a weight class with five automatic qualifiers, that wasn't enough to earn an auto bid to nationals, so Briggs had to sweat it out a little bit before the final field was announced – but her overall body of work, not to mention the fact that she was the Eagles' highest-ranked wrestler by the NAIA coaches committee, was good enough to earn her an at-large selection to the national tournament in her first season of college wrestling.
Unseeded in the 191 bracket, Briggs will compete in one of the five first-round ties in that division, and what a tantalizing matchup it is: Briggs' first opponent will be Grand View's Olivia Brown, who Briggs famously knocked off in less than a minute on the Vikings' Senior Day just about a month ago. That was by far the biggest victory – in terms of national rankings, at least – recorded by an Eagle this year, and the two will face off for a second time now on the sport's biggest stage.
Brown has fallen off slightly in the national picture since that night in Iowa in early February, but she remains a legitimate podium threat and a tough first-round opponent. Brown was ranked 13th in the final coaches' poll and is seeded eighth in this event, but Briggs was ranked 12th in that same poll and despite being unseeded, could be considered a favorite given their head-to-head history. Regardless, the winner of that match would face unseeded Payton Sholander of Wayland Baptist in the second round, ranked No. 15 in the weight in the final national poll.
The 2024 NAIA Women's Wrestling Championship officially begins at 10 AM on Friday from the campus of Jamestown University. Lottie will be one of the first wrestlers in action, right after the top of the hour, with Briggs to follow at approximately 11 AM. Stay tuned to Avila Athletics and Avila Wrestling on social media for updates from throughout the week as Shannon Briggs and Markayla Lottie begin their pursuit for the first podium finish in Avila Women's Wrestling history. Details on how to watch and follow along all weekend have been posted on our website, avilaathletics.com.
