SANTA ANA – She was bribed with late-night snacks.
Anabelle Serratos’ father, Fernando, was coaching a wrestling club when she 7 years old. Anabelle would go along with her father to the club’s workouts, mostly to get some of the post-workout snacks and to play in the dodgeball games that were always part of the evening.
She watched the wrestlers and decided to give it a try. “It looked like a cool sport,” she recalls.
Then her sisters, Alicia and Angelica, started going to the workouts and also decided to pursue wrestling.
On Friday, Alicia, Anabelle and Angelica Serratos will wrestle for Santa Ana High School in the CIF Southern Section Masters Meet at Sonora High School in La Habra.
Alicia and Angelica Serratos won CIF Southern Section titles last week in the Eastern Division Individual Championships at Corona High. Anabelle, who is a sophomore, was a second-place finisher. The three Serratos sisters qualified for the Masters Meet, where the top eight finishers in each weight class advance to the CIF State Championships next week in Bakersfield.
Alicia is a senior and the oldest of the sisters. She wrestles in the 105-pound class and is 34-4 this season. Anabelle, who is 34-8 and was a CIF-SS champion last year, is in the 120-pound class. Freshman Angelica wrestles at 100 pounds and is 36-0.
Their parents, Fernando and Monica Serratos, are coaches for the Santa Ana girls wrestling team that finished second to Corona in the CIF-SS Eastern Division championships this past Saturday and won a CIF-SS Dual Meet championship two weeks ago,
Fernando was a CIF-SS divisional champion for Santa Ana wrestling in 1996 at 119 pounds and a CIF-SS divisional and CIF-SS Masters champion in ‘97 at 112 pounds.
Monica wrestled at Estancia before girls wrestling was a thing, and was the captain of the Estancia boys wrestling team. She wrestled at Golden West College, coached at Laguna Hills High and, like Fernando, has that walk and that posture that belongs to someone not to mess with.
“Anabelle is the one who spearheaded all of this,” Fernando said. “The ‘we’re all in’ in our family dynamics started with her.”
After Anabelle started wrestling, Angelica, often called “Cookie’ by her parents and sisters, got into the sport when she was 6.
“We’d go to my dad’s practices and watch it and play dodgeball,” Angelica said. “And one day Anabelle decided to try it and I saw her laughing and having fun. I decided to join and I fell in love with the sport.”
Although she is the oldest of the three sisters, Alicia was the last of them to pursue wrestling, getting into it when she was 9 years old.
“I should have been the first one,” Alicia said, “but I really wasn’t into sports growing up. Then my siblings started wrestling. It looked like fun and something I wanted to be part of.”
Tim Byers is head coach with Fernando for the Santa Ana girls wrestling program. He has been with Saints wrestling since 2010.
“I’ve had seven pairs of sisters wrestle for me here,” Byers said Wednesday in the Santa Ana girls wrestling room. “One year I had five pairs of sisters on the same team. But we’ve had nothing like the level that these three girls are at.
“They love the sport. They live for the sport.”
All athletes have a bond with others in their sport. Wrestling has that, too, but it’s different. A wrestler does not have a teammate there to compensate for an error, and most wrestlers appreciate what it took for their opponent to learn the technique, develop the stamina and courage required to succeed on the mat, and the battle to maintain weight to stay within a weight class while simultaneously building strength.
“Everyone in this sport puts in so much work,” Alicia said. “When you beat someone you’re crushing their dreams while achieving yours. Everyone in our sport understands the struggle that goes into our sport.”
It might seem a big deal to some that these three sisters, who all are high academic achievers, too, have qualified for the Masters Meet and are one step away from wrestling in the CIF State meet. Angelica, though, just shrugs that off.
“I’m kind of not surprised all three of us made it this far,” Angelica said. “We know our limits and we know how far we can go. When we all qualified for Masters it was like ‘Oh, whatever’ like it was just another day for us.”
Who is the best wrestler of the three sisters?
“My little sister, Cookie,” Anabelle said. “My older sister is not as athletic as we are. She doesn’t have the natural abilities. I have the athletic gifts, but I’m a little lazy in the sport. My little sister, she has the talent and the work ethic. During the summer she’ll do all of this extra work.”
So it’s hard on Angelica on the rare occasions she has lost in her middle-school and non-high school matches.
“When I lose it’s very heartbreaking,” Angelica said. “I know I worked super hard to get there. But sometimes I don’t wrestle my best and I know I could have done better.”
Wrestling runs in the Serratos family. That run could go all the way to the CIF State finals for three Serratos sisters next week.
