THE FRONT ROW WITH BRUCE BOURQUIN: Friday, February 5, 2016

Post Falls High junior Cierra Foster is the most talented girls wrestler in this area, having finished third two years ago in the state 5A wrestling tournament as a 106-pound freshman — the highest finish at state by a girl wrestler in Idaho.

That season, she was also the first female to win a match at the Tri-State tournament.

The 16-year-old is by no means alone, although when she started out there were fewer female wrestlers.

This year alone, there have been rough n’ tough female wrestlers at every large school in the area, nearly all of them first-year varsity wrestlers. Except for Foster, who wrestles in the 125-pound range, they are all the first female wrestler in the respective schools’ history.

Bre Williams, a Lake City High senior, waited two years while fighting through injuries and has done fairly well and is doubling as a mentor to some of the younger Timberwolf wrestlers.

Gillian Noll, a 145-pound Coeur d’Alene High senior, is a mixed martial arts fighter who has been using wrestling as a tool to improve and shore up her one main weakness. As of last week, Noll was trying to earn a varsity spot before 5A regionals begin on Feb. 20 at Lakeland. Williams and Noll are both 17.

Then there is the youngest, Lakeland High sophomore Andrea Taylor, a 98-pounder who turns 16 in five days, and who set some school history.

AFTER WRESTLING boys and a few girls her first two years of high school, Foster has wrestled just girls in Washington this season. Because she goes to high school in Idaho, Foster cannot wrestle in Washington’s state high school tournament. She said she’s no longer wrestling boys because some of them are gaining more muscle than her and at times, it puts her at a pretty big disadvantage. While wrestling solely girls, Foster was 21-1 as of last week, with 19 pins and two technical falls. Her lone loss was a 5-1 decision to Puyallup’s Jordyn Bartleson, a three-time state champion from Washington, where Foster said “I wasn’t on top of my game. I could have beaten her.”

“I’m getting bigger to the point where I can’t cut weight,” said Foster, who still practices with the Post Falls team. “To the point where I’m wrestling (boys and) getting hurt. I was wrestling our 132-pounder (in practice) and I was in a double-leg and then he sprawled and I landed directly on my head on the ground super hard and he landed directly down on top of me. And that’s how I got my concussion and I got my shoulder wrapped. In early December, I was wrestling a 145-pounder (in practice) and he switched on me and I couldn’t get my arm out, and I dislocated my arm.”

Foster has been encouraged by all the female wrestlers coming out. There have been girls wrestlers in the past 10 to 15 years before, at high schools like Lakeland and Sandpoint, but not necessarily to the extent of this season.

“When I first started wrestling, there were not a lot of girls at all,” Foster said. “Now to see there are a lot of girls that are coming out to wrestle, it’s really encouraging, because there are only seven states that are a sanctioned state (to have girls wrestling) and Idaho could be on their way. Oregon will be sanctioned next year, this year they didn’t have enough teams. When I started wrestling, it was kind of frowned upon for girls to wrestle guys. And now it’s not really that way and that’s a step in the right direction.”

Foster is looking at possibly wrestling at either Oklahoma City University, an NAIA school and at a level where there is a national women’s tournament, and Simon Fraser University, a Division II school located just east of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Post Falls coach Pete Reardon led his teams to a state championship last season, runner-up finishes in 2012 and 2013, and a third-place finish in ’14. Naturally, he’s been encouraged by Foster.

“It puts her at a level playing field,” Reardon said of Foster wrestling just girls. “Colleges have shown interest in her, some can offer scholarships.”

Reardon said while a girls wrestler with the talent of Foster doesn’t come around that often, there are a few female wrestlers at the club level who at this point are planning to attend Post Falls.

“We have a couple of girls there,” Reardon said. “Whether or not they stick with it remains to be seen. We have two or three girls at the middle school and our club teams in general go from 5 years old to seventh grade. Girls wrestling up here is not out of the ordinary. We’ve had three or four girls in the area wrestling here. We promote anyone to join our teams, boys or girls.”

Foster is basically using this season and the next one to warm up for a much bigger national team — the U.S. Cadets World Championship wrestling team.

“This year I want to make it to the world team,” Foster said. “I’ll wrestle in the Body Bar Women’s Nationals in Texas (in Irving, near Dallas). You must get into the top three in order to make the team. My first year I was sixth and last year I was seventh. The first national tournament is in March in Oklahoma City and the third is July in Fargo (N.D.), but that’s for colleges, not for worlds.”

Foster said her brother Drake Foster, a former Post Falls star wrestler who this year was the first freshman to crack the starting lineup for the University of Wyoming since 2008, has been a great influence to her over the years.

“I always talk to him,” Cierra said. “He gets what I’m talking about.”

WILLIAMS HAS been a nice example of dedication to a program and doing whatever Lake City has asked her to do. After moving from Sandpoint to Coeur d’Alene, she initially wanted to join the wrestling team. But things didn’t necessarily work out.

“She decided it wasn’t for her,” eighth-year Lake City coach Corey Owen said. “She was our team manager for two years and this year (as of last week) she was 5-13. She beat a wrestler from Whitefish (at a tournament in) Missoula. She’s the first girl to have stuck with it. What I find refreshing is her hard work to work on her technique. You’d never know we had a girl in the room. She’s helped others with their technique.”

Williams is from a wrestling family, as her father Junior Williams and her brother Troy Goodman also wrestled. She went through her own set of injuries.

“As a sophomore my disc bulged in my lower back,” Williams said. “It took a couple years to heal. Even though I took off three years, I’m very observant. It made me think more. My favorite part of wrestling is it’s physically hard. I love that it’s growing. When I was younger, I was the only girl wrestling. My first wrestling tournament was at West Valley, it was a little JV tournament. I beat three boys and got first place. The boys are super strong, they have a lot of muscle. I try to stay powerful, I try to get angles. If I don’t, they’ll muscle me with their strength. I’m looking at colleges with girls teams, like Eastern Washington University. When I’ve wrestled against girls, I don’t get thrown around as much. I do the throwing around.”

NOLL IS someone I wrote about as a sophomore in November of 2013. Now a senior wrestling on the JV team, the Post Falls native nicknamed “Valkyrie” simply uses wrestling in order to improve her young amateur MMA bantamweight career. Noll is 4-2 and according to the website expandedsports.com, she said she got the nickname because it means Viking warriors who came into battle and decided who lived and who died. Give yourself a treat if you already knew what a Valkyrie meant, because I sure did not. Noll lost her last fight on Nov. 19, 2015, but won two fights by choke hold and according to tapology.com, she is ranked 79th out of 396 women, pound-for-pound, in the western United States. She is 12th out of 73 female fighters in the Pacific Northwest.

“I have learned how to scramble better, how to be quick on your feet,” Noll said. “I’ve noticed a great improvement in my wrestling skills, I’m more quick. I don’t schedule fights during wrestling. I’ve won nine out of 15 matches. I don’t get turned easily. The other girls wrestlers are all great, because we can beat boys easily. It’s about who has more dedication. I think it’s really cool, more girls are coming in. It is a fantastic sport.”

And of course in MMA, Noll has her eye on the prize. Her next fight is in March at the Clearwater Casino in Lewiston. Her goal is to turn pro.

Noll’s wrestling coach at Coeur d’Alene High, Jeff Moffat, said Noll has been great for the team.

“She’s been the first girls wrestler who’s stuck it out at this school,” Moffat said. “Our program has been around since the late ’50s or early ’60s. What separates Gillian is she really pays attention to detail. If our guys paid attention to technique like she does, we’d really have something. I was never an advocate of girls wrestling boys. But ever since Gillian’s come around, I’ve changed my mind. These girls are special; we’d get one every 30 years of coaching.”

TAYLOR MAY be the youngest of this group, but she has the same fire and passion for the sport as anyone else, boy or girl.

“I won four matches (out of 20),” Taylor said. “It’s pretty fun, it teaches you about self-control. I think the more younger girls see them (wrestling), the more they say, ‘I can do this.’”

Lakeland coach Rob Edelblute has seen plenty of encouraging signs from his new young wrestler.

“She is the first girl I’ve had that made it through the whole season,” Edelblute said. “I’ve coached for 17 years. I think it’s great, girls wrestling is becoming more popular, it’s in the Olympics now. She’s just learning, she’s gottten better. She likes challenges. I’m proud of her.”

There are plenty of things to be proud of with these female warriors.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, via e-mail at bbourquin@cdapress.com or via Twitter @bourq25