Taylor Peterson
Sport: Wrestling
School: Garfield
Class: Junior. Age: 16
Accomplishment: Peterson captured the “Queen of the East” 152-pound championship at Pennsauken, beating the top-seeded girl, 8-7 in the finals. She then scored a first-minute pin over a male wrestler from Hawthorne in the Boilermakers’ dual meet two days later at 144 pounds.
Story by Paul Schwartz, Record Sports Department
Don’t try and classify Taylor Peterson as an athlete.
She’s a soccer goalie who wants to play football. She’s a softball player who wants to play baseball. And she’s not a girl wrestler. She’s a wrestler.
While the Garfield middleweight wrestler would probably rather be playing first base for the Yankees, anyone who underestimates her ability to wrestle, whether she’s facing a girl in a high level tournament or a boy in a Boilermaker dual meet, is forewarned.
“I don’t treat anybody differently on the mat,” she said.”It’s just wrestler to wrestler. I’m not afraid to wrestle anybody.”
That much was clear from the first varsity high school match she wrestled as a freshman in 2020.
On Senior night at Garfield, she faced a Lyndhurst boy in the 127-pound match midway through the meet. She wrestled gamely in front of the boisterous home crowd, but trailed, 16-8, midway through the final period.
“He was tired, but I wasn’t,” Peterson remembers. “He took a sloppy shot at me and missed and I flipped him over and pinned him.”
“She stole the show from the seniors that night and the crowd went wild,” said Garfield coach Aaron Kahn, who has known Taylor since she started wrestling as an 8-year old because she wanted to do what older brother Evan was doing.
But even though Peterson is one of the best girls in New Jersey, her road in the sport hasn’t always been a smooth one.
“She was pretty raw coming into high school and she often lets her athleticism overwhelm her wrestling ability and sometimes that doesn’t end well,” said Kahn.
Take her first round Regional girls match as a freshman. She was seeded first in her weight class at the North Regional and was leading, 10-0, near the end of the first period.
“I had her on her back but I was leaning over trying to pin her and she rolled me over and pinned me,” Peterson remembers ruefully. “I just threw my headpiece at coach and stormed off the mat.”
“She doesn’t like to lose and that can be a good thing, once you learn how to handle yourself and carry yourself properly,” said Kahn. “She learned from that.”
