PORTLAND — Kerrilee McMahan was terrified.

As she prepared for her first 120-pound match Friday at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the Gilchrist High freshman was bouncing around behind the mats, outwardly displaying the poise of a champion boxer awaiting all challengers. The nerves, however, were running high.

Competing in the exhibition girls division of the wrestling state championships, one of two Central Oregonians in the field, McMahan was on a stage she had worked hard to reach after years of battling opponents on the mat and demons off it.

Twelve years ago, McMahan and her younger sister were strapped into car seats in the back seat of a Datsun pickup that rolled 22 feet down an embankment in the tiny Jackson County town of Trail, north of Medford. The accident killed the driver — McMahan’s father, according to the Medford Mail Tribune. When she was 8 years old, according to her aunt, McMahan was placed in foster care after her mother became addicted to drugs. (McMahan now lives with her stepfather.)

Yet here was McMahan, prepping just before a win in the semifinals a day before pinning Liberty’s Saskia Vanderhoff to win the state championship — Gilchrist’s first wrestling state title for any gender. Here was McMahan along with Bend High’s Noemi Mosso and another 38 girls competing at the state meet: pioneers in Oregon high school wrestling.

Just do not expect McMahan or Mosso to agree with that sentiment. For these two, they were simply here to wrestle.

“It teaches you about life,” said McMahan, who has wrestled since kindergarten. “My motto is: You win with class, you lose with class. Life isn’t always going to hand you what you want, but you have to make the best out of it. You lose some, you gain some.”

Mosso, who placed fourth in the 170-pound bracket at the state meet, does not have McMahan’s wrestling experience.

This was the Bend sophomore’s first season, and she was one of six Bend High girls who turned out for the wrestling team as part of a recruiting effort by Lava Bears coach Luke Larwin and endured the grueling season.

“I might as well try it,” Mosso remembered thinking. “I just wanted to try something new. I talked to him (Larwin), I was committed to the sport, and now I’m here (at state).”

The regular season included varsity and junior varsity matches for McMahan, who took on boys and girls alike. One of nine wrestlers on the Gilchrist roster — and the only girl — McMahan finished the season 7-7 and recorded with three falls in her four straight wins to close the campaign. As for Mosso, who went 1-10, she competed against boys at the Central Oregon FN Championships as well as at girls-only meets such as the Hood River Elks Ladies Tournament.

“Women’s wrestling is really important for the sport of wrestling in general,” Larwin said. “It creates an equal opportunity for access to competition. … The other thing is just the positive social structure it creates. Socially, it’s been really positive because (Bend’s girls) became a nucleus of a team within themselves, encouraging each other, being teammates, growing as wrestlers and growing as athletes.”

According to Brad Garrett, an assistant executive director with the Oregon School Activities Association, the girls exhibition division was added to the official state tournament schedule two years ago. And since then, the sport has only become more popular with girls.

For the 2012-13 season, 131 girls representing 59 schools were certified via the Oregon Wrestling Weight Monitoring Program. This year, those numbers spiked to an astounding 249 wrestlers from 93 schools. At the Oregon high school girls state qualifying meet early last month in Cottage Grove, some 150 wrestlers participated.

“I think there is potential for (female wrestlers) to get some kind of girls division established at the state wrestling tournament and have it kind of enveloped under the OSAA umbrella to start with,” Garrett said. “No longer would there be an outside entity (the girls division is run by the Oregon Wrestling Association) that ran a qualifying tournament. The OSAA would set that qualifying tournament. It would essentially come under our purview.”

For now, the girls train with and often compete against the boys. But that is not an issue for McMahan and Mosso.

“It’s harder to wrestle boys. It really is,” McMahan said. “But I love it. It’s a challenge.”

“Gender didn’t matter,” Mosso said of training with the boys. “We’re just people at practice. Gender doesn’t matter. We practice like it’s a normal day. Sometimes girls are like, ‘Isn’t it weird practicing with a guy?’ And I’m like, ‘No.’ Just go for it. It doesn’t matter.”

If anything, the girls’ participation and commitment inspire male teammates.

“Girls are just as capable of being mentally tough as a boy,” Larwin said, adding that the girls might possess stronger mental fortitude. “I think our girls, what they’ve shown is they do the best they can do no matter what, and that is training with integrity. That has actually been really motivating for our boys also, to see what these girls have done.

“Our girls didn’t just show up to do what they want to do. Our girls bought in completely, and they work hard, and they do all the things we ask them to do. They’ve represented themselves well. The more that girls are getting involved in wrestling, I think that respect is developing statewide more and more.”

That is not what wrestlers like McMahan and Mosso were seeking, really. They were at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, at the pinnacle of their young high school wrestling careers, basking in the spotlight.

Sure, McMahan will sometimes receive strange looks or responses from those who discover that this is the sport she has loved for years. But that has never — and will never — get her off the mat. Especially now, after the weekend she just put together as Gilchrist’s first wrestling state champion.

Wrestling is no longer just a boys club. Said McMahan: “It’s the best thing in the world.”

—Reporter: 541-383-0307, glucas@bendbulletin.com.