TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. \u2014\u00a0East Lake senior Arianna Antoniou is used to setting the tone.<\/p>\n
She is used to setting the scene. She is used to blazing a trail.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
East Lake High senior Arianna Antoniou capped off her senior wrestling season with a state championship
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She’s the first female at East Lake to win a wrestling state title
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She will continue wrestling at the next level. She’s attending the University of Florida and plans to wrestle on the club team<\/p>\n
But this season, Antoniou\u00a0did something no other girl had ever done at East Lake High School. She made history as the first girl to win a wrestling state championship. Not bad for a girl who took up the sport because she saw it advertised on a flyer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means a lot to me,\u201d she said. \u201cI really hope I did inspire people to just try out wrestling. Like, even if they don\u2019t think they\u2019ll be good at it, even if they don\u2019t think that\u2019s the vehicle for them, just try it out. You\u2019ll have fun and you might stick with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antoniou\u00a0didn\u2019t set out to make history or serve as a role model. She just wanted to try a sport that would challenge her. That would provide a platform to compete. And that\u2019s what wrestling did. Wrestling gave Antoniou\u00a0a strong foundation to build upon in whatever she decides to do in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery great wrestler needs athletic ability and a good mindset,\u201d head coach Jason Leggett said. \u201cAnd she has both of them and you can\u2019t really teach a good mindset. You can teach them how to wrestle but you can\u2019t teach them how to think about wrestling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next up for Antoniou\u00a0after graduation is the University of Florida. They have a club wrestling team and she plans on continuing to take part in her favorite sport because it\u2019s given her so much.<\/p>\n
\u201cI leaned that no matter what I\u2019m doing, no matter how hard I think anything I\u2019m going through in life is, I can do it,\u201d Antoniou\u00a0said. \u201cAs long as I put my mind to it, as long as I believe in myself, put the work in, I can do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. \u2014\u00a0East Lake senior Arianna Antoniou is used to setting the tone. She is used to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1238,1748,1236,3745,13013,115,110,135,137,136,835],"class_list":["post-230894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-sports","tag-athlete-of-the-week","tag-florida-sports","tag-high-school-sports","tag-katherine-smith","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}