Indie Alaska

Next up on mat 4 Della Churchill of Wrangell.

it's one thing that I have that has stayed normal my entire life.

Like even if I lose somebody or somebody new comes into the picture and good or bad, wrestling stays the same.

Let's go honey.

When I'm on the mat, I can only hear one person's voice, and that's Carney's voice.

Right back in.

Right back And like everything else, like, if there's other people screaming at me or cheering me on or anything, I cannot hear it like I can only hear Carney's voice when I'm out on the mat wrestling.

When they walk out on the mat.

I yell their name out real quick, just like, hey Della let's go.

Right?

And so they automatically know where I am.

Alright Della Let's go.

sometimes it could get messy during the match where people could just be like, just hitting my head too hard or something, and Carney will just tell me that I need to focus, take a deep breath, and then I'm set back in.

I'm ready to go.

So we talk a lot about, overcoming.

We talk a lot about discipline.

It's not going to be easy.

wrestling's miserable.

Wrestling is horrible actually sometimes.

But enduring that pain and discomfort for the ultimate goal is like what we're getting ready for real life.

It's not about winning.

It's about putting everything into it.

And that's that's what makes me proud.

Like when you can look into their little eyes and they're giving it everything that they have on the mat, it's it's amazing because you're so proud of them.

You can't help it.

Be so proud of them.

And then they see that, and they're so proud of themselves hey, you got my circle back.

Oh.

So we live in Southeast Alaska usually people can tell with their hand if they do that.

And we're like, more towards down here.

Wrangells more towards like the inside.

that's one thing I love about living here is that you don't feel like it's like endless ocean when you look out into the water, because then you can just see the other islands.

I just feel like it seems safer to me.

The t transportation is a little limited, you can't drive to different places in Southeast; depending on where we're going, we could leave Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.

And usually we always get back on Sunday.

No.

No weekends.

Not during wrestling season.

Do.

I feel like, over the last few years, wrestling has definitely gotten bigger And we have 20 something kids on our wrestling team.

Like, there's barely enough room to have everybody in the wrestling room, Yeah.

Ten.

Sit ups.

and we just always have to be careful and have mat awareness when we're practicing, So Wrangell, Well I'll tell you If you look around there's basketball coaches, referees, coaches, wrestling coaches that all come from Wrangell.

And so there's something about Wrangell community.

I don't know what it is, but they become they become leaders in the sports world.

All right.

Wolves on three... one, two, three wolves!

Sports is a really big thing here but if you don't do sports, You can also get a job like a lot of kids work after school, and especially during the summertime, almost all the kids get a job, whether it's fishing or touring or working at the store.

going four wheeling.

And snow machining in the winter time when you can, things like that.

I guess a lot of outdoors things, a lot of hunting and fishing too.

My grandpa has a few boats and well either go check the skates or the shrimp parts or the crab pots.

Growing up I did a lot of gill netting with my dad in the summertime.

my dad liked hunting a lot too, so we always went hunting with him when we could, It's kind of crazy because, you know, these kids from really little.

You know, I remember Della when she was like 3 or 4 when I first moved here.

and I wrestled against her uncle, Harry Churchill.

And so I knew the Churchill family.

I knew their parents.

So when I came here, it was like oh wrestling family.

Well, I started wrestling when I was five because my mom and dad got me into wrestling at a really young age.

And, my older brother was in wrestling when he was four, so we were just always super excited for wrestling, even when I was just in elementary school.

it's such a fantastic outlet.

I mean, it's a great way to build up their self-esteem and make them feel good about themselves.

Plus we wanted Della to have a nice sense of self-defense when she got there.

She's so beautiful and she's going to be so far away.

We just want to make sure that she can handle herself, well, I'm Aleut and Russian.

The family happened because, well, I was terrified and he already knew, like he had a really amazing family growing up.

It was like the kind of family that you look at.

You're like, oh, wow, that's what I supposed to be like.

he got me through a lot of hard stuff.

And I was a kid, and his family was just always there for me.

and then we came home to get married, and we just decided to stay.

at that time, when we found out we were pregnant with Randy.

So it was like just one thing after another.

We had Della and everything was perfect.

and then we decided we were gonna have another one, and we got Titan.

They're amazing.

Really amazing.

They're like.

The glue that holds us all together.

Well, I'm out of here.

I gotta go to chemistry.

With a whole thing of celery.

They are amazing.

They have every piece of the puzzle.

Della is so much more put together than I ever was.

I mean, she's better than me in every way, and it's perfect.

It makes me so happy.

Right leg back.

Ready?

Begin.

She's my team captain, so if I'm late here in the next five minutes, she'll She'll have the room going.

Switch.

I guess I do win a lot of tournaments, but I didn't start getting, I guess, good at wrestling until I was in middle school.

and my brother broke his arm while he was wrestling, and I don't know why, but just when that happened.

I just started taking it more seriously, my freshman year, I was very intimidated and I didn't win very much.

But then my sophomore year, I started kicking it into gear more, and I was winning more and learning more moves.

And then my junior year, I won almost every tournament I went to, and I even got a W, which is outstanding wrestler.

regionals.

usually they give it to like a senior, but I was just a junior, so I honestly wasn't expecting it last year.

15 seconds.

It felt good to be recognized for the work that I was putting in because my junior year was the first wrestling season where I didn't have my dad, because before that he was at every tournament.

And, always giving me advice, like from when I was five years old to 16, he just was there telling me this and that about wrestling.

And, he's the reason that I even did the sport in the first place.

So not having him there my junior year was really hard, obviously, and it just felt good that those people noticed how much work I was putting in and, just how hard I was working, even though I had a lot of things that I was dealing with, my junior year.

I lost my husband.

So after dad and, a logging accident.

I was devastated.

And after that, I lost my business because, I couldn't really run a restaurant anymore Has it has been a really hard couple of years.

there's been some hardships in the community.

In Ringle.

A massive late night landslide on Monday took out three homes along the town's main highway.

In the days since, three people have been found dead, but search and rescue efforts continue along with community aid.

Landslides aren't necessarily common.

I've never experienced a landslide until then.

I never even heard about one.

I think it was just because we had so much rain a lot of people were hit by it.

Just because we are such a small community You.

Wrestling is one of the biggest, like, most supportive things that I have in my life.

And wrestling's just definitely helped me.

Like when I lost my friend on the landslide the next day, we still had practice, like the next week or so.

We still had practice and tournament going on in Wrangell, and I was just really hurting and I just needed to breathe.

wrestling's just definitely helped me.

just being in that wrestling room just makes me feel so happy.

And it helps with the grief and your And then my junior year I also lost my grandpa to cancer.

it was just everything on top, one on top, another on top of another.

Like you just couldn't breathe through one tragedy before another one was happening.

But my dad was amazing and all the things that he would talk about and taught me, they're they're ringing through my head every day.

You.

I miss my dad.

They miss their grandpa.

we always leaned on each other for everything.

When whenever anything has ever happened, one of us, we've always been right there for each other.

So this just this happened to all of us and it just kept happening to all of us.

So we just kept leaning in and looking forward to things in the future that we're going to be milestones Ill take the stairs and beat you down there.

Im going to take the stairs and I will beat you down there.

and nothing will ever be the same again.

But we are finding our way to a new normal.

having all those things happened within the span of a year just kind of took a toll on me.

But wrestling always helped me through those things.

Come on.

Billy.

I don't know, I guess I kind of like that it's like a way to handle my emotions or anything.

Like, it's just a great outlet for me.

Like, if I'm having a hard day or something.

I'm excited for practice and especially after my dad died.

It's just been a good thing when I wasn't like in therapy or something, and I just felt like I couldn't really talk to anyone or express how I was feeling, and it was just really easy to work out my feelings on the mat and just practice.

And it's just a great outlet for it's like when I step into the wrestling room, everything else just stops and it's just wrestling and I love that.

And I feel like wrestling teaches people a lot of life lessons, whether they know it or not.

it makes you really mentally tough.

And you can incorporate a lot of things you learn in wrestling, in real life.

Even though I'm just in a small town, I have people who have had suicidal thoughts, or know of people who have friends that go through that.

And I know of my like, different friends who have gone through grief and just being a good support system that they need somebody to talk to or cry to or anything.

She's going to do amazing things.

I have no doubts in her at all.

I just feel like being there for my friends helps me out in a way to.

We can't let grief consume you.

I mean, it will tear you apart, but you just can't let it destroy you.

Everybody has terrible things that they go through.

But the important thing is that you realize that everybody has terrible things that they go through.

And just be kind to people.

Sometimes there's just harder days than others.

And when I look at it all in one, I can just feel grateful for the things that I do have.