Gray tries to turn Erin Clodgo during the U.S. Open women’s freestyle finals at 67 kg/147.5 lbs. Larry Slater photo. Continued from page 6


soccer was my No. 1 sport until I was 16. I played on a travel team for soccer, with professional level coaches. It wasn’t a rec league. We played what was called P-1.” “I got hurt the first day of soccer my freshman year,” recalled


Gray. “I hurt my knee and had to sit out the whole season, it was terrible. When I could compete and work out again, it was wrestling season. “I started kicking butt. I won USGWA’s that year and even went to Sweden for the Klippan Open.”


Her father George, currently a detective in the Denver Police


Department, recalls when Adeline first started wrestling. “I have four daughters because we kept trying for the boy,” George joked. “Adeline was the first. I was athletic and did all sports, it wasn’t just one. When the kids started growing up, they followed me to softball and boxing. They naturally got into sports and I loved wrestling.


“Her uncle Paul (Delmonico), Donna’s brother, was an All- American at Western State and he got his kids into wrestling and helped coach the Bear Creek Junior Wrestling program,” he said. “We started getting into it.” In 2006, after winning the U.S. Girls Wrestling Association national championships, Gray hit the freestyle scene. Finishing third in 2006 at 138 pounds, she won her first Junior National Championship in 2007 at 146 pounds, beating Vermont’s Erin Clodgo – the same opponent she would beat in the 2011 U.S. Open Championships finals in Cleveland back in April. Gray followed with championships all over the place, includ- ing a Junior World title in 2008. “The success is just part of my personality,” she said. “I’m a very determined person. I like just being able to put a task in front of me.”


But despite living a little less than an hour away from where Continued on page 8


USA Wrestler 7


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