It’s been a week since Haley Smarsh took home the gold medal she’d long coveted, and it took a while for it to sink in that she’d really done it.
“I still can’t believe that it happened,” the Moon Area junior said earlier this week, referring to her championship performance at last weekend’s PIAA Individual Wrestling Championships at Giant Center in Hershey.
“I’m just so glad that it happened. I’ve worked so hard for this moment and then it happened.
“I’m here now.”
Here is the top of the high school wrestling heap, at least in the 130-pound weight class. Smarsh polished off her final opponent, Shannon Logue of Bishop Shanahan, by a 17-6 major decision in the championship match.
That victory enabled Smarsh to finish the season with a 41-3 record and improved her career record to 97-13 with one more season to go. She became the third wrestler from Moon to win a state wrestling title and the first since Wally Wickline turned the trick in 1992.
Smarsh had reached the finals as a freshman, where she lost to Aubre Krazer of Easton by fall. She was geared up to take on Krazer in a rematch last year, but a back injury that had occurred early in the season flared up and she was forced to injury default in her last two matches at the 2025 state tournament and had to settle for sixth place.
That didn’t set well with Smarsh, but it didn’t stop her from rededicating herself last summer. She picked up freestyle wrestling, which is different from the style used in high school, and said that made her an even stronger wrestler overall.
Mike Muraco, Moon’s wrestling coach, said Smarsh spent a great deal of time working in the offseason and that made a huge difference this season.
“She came into the season a little more prepared because of her offseason work,” he said. “She’s always been a pretty solid wrestler, even two years ago as a freshman. I’ve just noticed that from last year to this year she made some drastic improvements.
“She seems more confident – she has more of an attack-mode type of approach. And her skills have improved a lot because of all the work she put in. I feel she’s one of the more elite wrestlers in the area, and I think it finally started to sink in that she’s on that level.”
Muraco said that it’s not that Smarsh is boastful or cocky in her approach. “I think it’s just more believing in herself – believing she can do well in any situation,” he said. “That’s been one of her biggest improvements.”
Muraco said that even though Smarsh reached the state finals as a freshman, she seemed to have spent that year “trying to figure out where she was.”
“Now she’s finally figured out she can be very good – not just like good on a local level,” he said.
Smarsh said picking up freestyle wrestling — a style not used at the high school level — last summer whet her appetite to learn even more about her sport. It’s that thirst for wrestling knowledge that makes Smarsh believe she’ll never get burned out on wrestling, no matter how much time she dedicates to it.
During the season, Smarsh trains three days a week at the South Hills Wrestling Academy and one day working with here high school team. “For me, I always want more,” she said. “I always feel there’s something I can get batter at — another thing to perfect.”
Smarsh said her offseason work last summer helped her prepare not only for her regular WPIAL competition but for three major national-level tournaments in December, where she finished fourth, second and then took first place.
She said those tournaments helped her get a feel for what wrestling is like outside of Pennsylvania, and what some of the girls elsewhere are capable of doing on the mat. And it fueled her desire for what she enjoys most – competing.
“I love the competition,” said Smarsh, a three-time WPIAL champion. “It’s one of my favorite things.”
Smarsh said she’s hoping to continue wrestling beyond high school and has heard from a few schools already. “I’m hoping to hear from more,” she said.
Muraco said he thinks Smarsh is capable of competing at the next level.
“As long as she keeps putting in the work like she did last season, she has the potential to wrestle anywhere she wants,” he said. “Time will tell what opportunities present themselves. But I think she’s in a unique decision.”
It’s somewhat ironic, given that the first time Smarsh had a chance to wrestle as a youngster, she said no thanks. She was 5 or 6 years old, and her parents asked her and her younger brother if either would be interested in participating in a youth wrestling program.
“I said no, and my brother said yeah,” she said.
She accompanied her mother to her brother’s first practice and when she peeked into the wrestling room and saw what was happening, she said she wanted to give it a shot. She couldn’t do it that day because she wasn’t dressed appropriately.
“The next day I went in and fell in love with the sport – and stuck with it,” she said.
She wrestled against boys most of the time growing up, but girls wrestling became a sanctioned sport just in time for Smarsh’s freshman year at Moon. Muraco said he thought Smarsh was sort of “riding the wave” her freshman year and wasn’t expected to beat Krazer that year in the finals. But she was hoping to give Krazer — who finished third in the nation this year wrestling for Lehigh — a tougher time last season until she got hurt.
So it was two years before Smarsh could get herself back into the finals.
“I know it was a goal of hers to win the state championship,” Muraco said. “The fact that she did it, she was super excited about it.”
Smarsh said she was confident going against Logue, especially given that she had the experience of wrestling for a gold medal two years earlier. But the fact that her match was the very last one of the night was a bit nerve-racking.
“Once I got on the mat, I knew what I could do,” she said. “I just had to trust I’d be able to finish the match.
“I worked so hard. I had wrestled in every position, so wherever I ended up in that match, I felt like I knew how to battle back from it.”
Now that the season is over, Smarsh said she planned to take a week or so off to “calm down and relax” and then slowly get back at it, with an eye toward competing in a few tournaments this summer.
As for next year? “I just want to work one match at a time and don’t think about the future,” she said. “Don’t think about the tournament I have the week after. Just focus on where I am.”
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