‘Hardest worker in the room’: Wichita girls wrestler wins national championship
Since winning a national title at the age of 6, Wichita native Presley Beard has been consumed by the sport of wrestling.
After one particularly gutting loss, she even requested to be home-schooled so she could maximize her time training in the gym.
A typical day for Beard, now 13, involves private lessons with women’s collegiate wrestlers at 7 a.m., a practice at Wichita Training Center in the afternoon and then more training on her own.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an adult have as much discipline as she has,” said Tristyn Macy, her mother. “She works harder than anyone I’ve ever seen at anything.”
That’s what made this past weekend so meaningful when Beard won the 14-under, 105-pound title at the USA Wrestling Women’s National Championships in Spokane, Washington.
After a 7-year wait and so many close calls, Beard returned to the top of the podium as a national champion.
“The most awe-inspiring thing about Presley is that she understands that the hard work may not pay off immediately, but she trusts the process of it,” Macy said. “It’s been (since 2018) since she won a national title and she never stopped working for it. I hope this shows other girls and young kids that success doesn’t always come all of the time. It may not come every year even, but if you will keep working and believe in yourself, then your time will come.”
Beard’s work ethic is widely respected at Wichita Training Center, and her coach, Noel Torres, credited that time spent on the mat for preparing her to win in Spokane.
“She’s probably the hardest worker in the room,” Torres said. “And the other thing that makes her special is her mentality. When she was down, she finds a way to go score and get her hand raised. There were multiple situations where she was down and had to find a way and she did. That’s all mentality and all heart.”
Beard, an eighth-grader, is a 6-time Kansas state champion who is planning to enroll at Goddard High School this coming fall.
Her mother said the wrestling community has embraced Beard and so many have helped her achieve her goals already. She trains at Wichita Training Center and with the Kansas Young Guns, including with coach Mike Atkins.
“It feels really nice to win with how much hard work that I’ve been putting in,” Beard said. “There’s a lot of people who support me and that helps keep me disciplined. It was just really nice to finally win it again.”
On top of winning the 14-under national title, Beard came back the next day to compete in the 15-under division as a 13-year-old. She even wrestled through a sprained ankle to finish in fourth place.
“Her toughness, you can’t teach that to kids,” Torres said. “That’s all heart.”
Beard is quiet by nature and rarely celebrates following victories, even ones that crown her a national champion.
But after seeing how much her daughter has invested in the sport, Macy showed enough emotion for the both of them after watching her daughter capture another gold medal.
“These moments in wrestling, they just don’t come very often,” Macy said. “There are probably 20 bad feelings when you usually leave those tournaments, so when you’ve got a good one, man, you hold on to it and you ride that wave of energy because that’s why we do it. I’m just so proud of her.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
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