Sure, Elly Janovsky tried other sports.
“I played softball for a couple of years,” she said. “I played soccer for about 10 years, but I was just never any good at it. I don’t have any ball skills or hand-eye coordination.”
But one sport with a straightforward path to success appealed to her.
“With wrestling, as long as you’re the hardest worker in the room, you’re probably going to be the best,” she said.
On Friday night, Janovsky was the best at 145 pounds. The Lake Central junior won the state title in her weight class during Indiana High School Girls Wrestling’s state meet at Mooresville High School.
“She’s got a lot more drive than I ever did,” her father Larry said with a laugh.
Larry Janovsky, a two-time semistate qualifier at Highland before graduating in 1995, is Lake Central’s girls wrestling coach. He has had a front-row seat for Elly Janovsky’s rise in the sport.
“She does it all on her own,” Larry Janovsky said. “It’s coming from within. It’s pretty amazing, how much she loves the sport and how much she’s willing to sacrifice for it.”
Elly Janovsky started her high school career with a runner-up finish at 152 at IHSGW’s state meet when she was a freshman. She recalled the sporadic nature of that season, which was affected by the coronavirus pandemic, saying she was “in and out of quarantine a bunch of times.”
That experience gave Janovsky a false sense of security. She said she believed she could get by with a similar amount of work as a sophomore. But she finished fourth at 152 last year.
“That made me switch my mindset for this year,” she said. “I’ve been going way harder at practice and making sure I get the toughest partners in the room that I can so I’m working as hard as I can all the time. And that’s what put me over the edge.”
Janovsky also settled on a new weight class after experimenting with a drop all the way down to 138. Moving to 145 proved to be a happy medium for her.
“It’s way more comfortable for me now,” she said. “I did 138 over the summer, but that was too low of a weight. When I came back up to 145, it was a lot more manageable.”
Janovsky’s progress came at a time when the road to a state title in Indiana has never been more difficult. Although still not sanctioned by the Indiana High School Athletic Association, girls wrestling was classified as “emerging” last summer. After 350 wrestlers competed at two regionals for tickets to state last year, more than 800 wrestlers registered for four regionals this season.
Among them was Highland freshman Aleksandra Bastaic, who won the state title at 126 on Friday. She said she overcame some nerves while competing at the high school level for the first time.
“I’m like the baby of the high school, so I didn’t want to wrestle terribly,” she said. “But I was able to calm my nerves down before each match and make one little key point that I wanted to get better at in each match.”
Bastaic is no stranger to big stages. She finished second at USA Wrestling’s Pan American Team Trials in Nebraska in August.
But her success at IHSGW’s state meet has her eyeing a deep run in the IHSAA’s boys wrestling state tournament, which will start with sectionals on Jan. 28. Bastaic finished third at 126 during the Northwest Crossroads Conference’s round robin tournament at Lowell on Saturday.
“My main goal is to make it beyond sectionals and regionals,” she said. “This has given me a bit more confidence and made me think about all of the other tournaments I’m getting ready for. This is the end of the season, so it’s time to start getting my technique tuned up to perfection.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.