On Saturday, Feb. 28, two grand marshals will lead the processions at the 5th annual girls’ IHSA state wrestling tournament.

One of them is Mrs. Margaret Lehr, a culinary teacher and head girls wrestling coach at Normal West, who has been a huge part of the massive growth in the past few years of the sport of girls’ wrestling.

Lehr started wrestling when she was in eighth grade.

“In eighth grade, I decided to give it a try. The junior high team was not open to it. That coach was very discouraging, but my friend decided that we should both still give this a try, it looks cool,” Lehr remembered.

When she started high school, her coach made her the team manager to learn more about wrestling, and in her sophomore year, she started as the only girl on the team.

She became good enough to compete against boys, but didn’t win many matches.

Later in her high school career, she competed in the national girls’ wrestling tournament, where she took second place.

After the first-place wrestler couldn’t compete in the world championships, Lehr was selected to take her spot.

“In my high school career, I only ever wrestled against boys. There weren’t any other girls wrestling at that point; it was just me, so wrestling in the women’s international circuit was a whole new experience,” Lehr noted.

Lehr was shipped to the New York Olympic training center to prepare for the world championships, which would take place in Sofia, Bulgaria.

“It was an amazing experience, and they wanted me to continue after that, but I didn’t really have plans of competing and wrestling in college. I didn’t have the facilities to train, so it just kind of fell away after that, but it was a pretty amazing experience,” Lehr said.

A woman competing in a male-dominated sport always comes with extensive challenges.

When asked about her biggest challenge in the world of wrestling, Lehr stated that “as a female competitor in a male sport, I was looked at as a sideshow, or somebody with an extra agenda. Not as a true athlete.”

Despite this, Lehr has always been very connected to the sport of girls’ wrestling.

After getting married to Mr. Dave Lehr, who works in the tech department and is the head boys wrestling coach at West, she decided that they needed to start an official girls wrestling team.

Since then, Lehr has continued to be a huge part of the growth of the sport.

“Really, the last five years have been explosive in growth in the state. It’s been a very gradual process over the last thirty years. The last ten is when it really started to pick up,” Lehr added.

Because of her extensive work for the support both here at West and throughout the state, tomorrow, Saturday, Feb. 28, Lehr will be one of two grand marshals as she was selected from thousands of people.

“I was shocked. actually it was really cool because my high school head coach was the one who got to call and tell me that I had been selected. He is still active in the wrestling community. He’s still a coach and he is on some of the committees that make these decisions. So I thought he was joking when he called me, but he’s not that kind of person to joke about that kind of stuff. So I was shocked, I was pleasantly surprised,” Lehr stated.

The grand marshals will lead the “March of Champions,” where they will escort the coaches, officials, and wrestlers onto the arena.

“The biggest thing is making sure I don’t trip when I walk out on the mat…” Lehr joked.

Lehr was asked if she had any advice for her former self or for girls around the world interested in doing wrestling or another sport.

“You should do it sooner, even if it’s for a short amount of time. If it scares you and you are not one hundred percent sure, but you think you want to give it a try, you should. It could be the next thing you will fall in love with. You can meet new people, and if you don’t, you would have never met them. So DO IT SOONER,” she noted.

Lehr has an extra reason to be excited for the tournament as freshmen Karsyn Robinson and sophomore Arian Sabu competed this weekend, as well.

Both Sabu and Robinson got pins in round 1, but lost in the quarterfinal to end their season.