Kristie Marano Finds a Way to Win
By Katie Downing

The US can count on a medal whenever Kristie Marano goes to a world championship competition. She has earned a total of six world championship medals over the course of her career to date. Anyone who is involved in women’s wrestling knows Kristie’s name. She is only a year older than I am, but she was already considered a veteran of the sport by the time I began to climb the senior ranks. The thing many people may not know about Kristie Marano is that she can always be counted on to come up with any movie line from Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, or Jim Carrey. Seriously, if you say a quote from just about any funny movie, Kristie won’t miss a beat to give you the next ten lines. Another list you can add to Kristie’s impressive stat record is a complete repertoire of Backstreet Boys songs. That’s right, folks, the embarrassing dirt comes out here! I have personally witnessed more than one Backstreet Boys performance with Kristie on lead vocals, and Lauren Wolfe singing her monotone backup part. Kristie’s sense of humor is as much a part of her as wrestling and her competitive drive to win.

Wrestling, New York, and family are completely inseparable with Kristie. She grew up in Albany, New York, is an avid Mets and Giants fan, wrestles for the New York Athletic Club, coached New York girls at Fargo, and she even won her world championships gold medal at home in Madison Square Garden. All the while, her family was there. Anyone who has ever wrestled Kristie has probably heard her daughter, Kayla, screaming her head off for her mom during your match. And if you’ve been around wrestling for a while, you’ve probably seen her parents and brothers at tournaments as well.

Kristie’s dad and brothers have contributed to her wrestling and her competitive nature her whole life. One time Kristie’s dad got tired of his kids arguing over who could use the car for the night, so he had them wrestle on the front lawn for the keys to the car. Kristie won. Kristie’s dad, Conrad, has always been full-time dad and full-time coach. He had a background in judo before Kristie was born, and knew the local judo sensei well. Conrad got Kristie to roll around with him on the judo mats when she was four, and it has been a part of her life ever since then.

During the week, Kristie’s evenings were spent in dojos or practice rooms, and her weekends were spent competing at judo tournaments or cheering for her brothers in pee-wee wrestling tournaments. Her dad even talked her into competing in one or two pee-wee tournaments. Kristie always focused on competitions. That’s what sport is all about for her. Kristie loves to compete, whether it’s for her parent’s car keys or in one sport or another. Training and competition are one and the same to Kristie. Practices are personal competitions to get her ready for tournaments. Small tournaments are competitions to get her ready for the most important events.

Kristie and her dad really believe in transitions and adapting when it comes to training. By her junior year in high school, Kristie was playing basketball as well as judo. She and her dad decided that basketball wasn’t really helping her judo at all. The two sports did not contribute or transition to one another well. Kristie decided to switch to wrestling as a form of cross-training for her judo. Kristie’s high school wrestling coach told her she had to make a total commitment to wrestling. She couldn’t just cross train. She had to be a dedicated member of the team, and had to compete for her team as well. That’s when Kristie became a wrestler as well as a judoka.

At that time, most of the girls wrestling on boys’ high school teams had to fight for their right to join the team, and had to earn the respect of their coaches and teammates over time. Kristie had been around wrestling so long that her coaches and teammates already knew what kind of competitor she was. They immediately supported her as a part of the team.

At first, Kristie wrestled to supplement her judo. She used as much judo in wrestling practices and competitions as she could, and took bits and pieces of wrestling over to judo practices and competitions. This is how Kristie began to develop ways to make her opponents wrestle her style and to wrestle her kind of match. That is what Kristie is known for now-she makes her opponents wrestle where she’s strongest and has the most success. Kristie’s dad watched her practices in both judo and wrestling, and spent many hours after practices one-on-one with her to make adjustments that best fit her style in both sports. With such a focus on transitions, Kristie and her dad shaped her style that started when she was four. Kristie took all of the skills from judo and found a way to make them work in wrestling. When she learned new things in wrestling, she found a way to make them work in judo. When you combine Kristie’s attitude to ‘find a way to make it work’ with competition, her attitude and style become ‘find a way to win.’ When Kristie has to wrestle with a bum knee, or wrestles someone bigger, stronger, faster, or more flexible than she is, she simply finds a way to win. She adapts to the situation and finds a way to win.