00:03Sometimes I think they're judging me.
00:09They probably think that you're not going to mess up because you're a girl.
00:34My name is Cookie. I'm eight years old and I live in the forest.
00:39Your sunflower is a lot smaller and there's a lot more. I like it.
00:46I have a lot of stuffed animals. I have Legos. I have a guitar.
00:51My favorite movies are horror movies like It, Chucky, Arachnophobia, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,
01:0628, 28 medals.
01:11I started wrestling when I was five, almost turning six.
01:17My wrestling heroes are my dad and my mom.
01:21Another one. Oh, that was the women's nationals that I went to.
01:25Man's oldest sport. It's not just for boys anymore.
01:30So I wrestled on my high school team competitively and back then there weren't a lot of girls wrestling, maybe
01:36a handful.
01:37There have been programs that I wrestled for where they think girls shouldn't be there.
01:41They think it's a joke and you get treated as such.
01:44I've gotten balls thrown at me. I've gotten water spit at me. I've been pantsed.
01:49I feel like with most girls in a male dominated sport, you do have to work twice as hard to
01:54win half the respect in the room.
01:58When I was little, I would go to tournaments that only had mostly boys.
02:06I want a lot more girls to start wrestling so they can feel good like I do.
02:13I want to be a famous wrestler. I want to get first in state.
02:19I want to go into the Olympics and I want to try to get first place.
02:28I need to get better so I can beat the kids that are older than me.
02:33So we're going to a wrestling camp where Jordan Boris is going to be teaching the first two classes.
02:41He's an Olympic champion and he's going to show us new moves that we probably don't know.
02:51I'm really confident. But sometimes I think the boys are thinking that, like, oh, that girl is so easy, I
02:58can beat her up in five seconds.
03:00But that's not true. Some girls are really hard, like me.
03:08Why don't you tell me about your favorite wrestling match you ever wrestled?
03:13My first one?
03:14You know why that was one of my favorites?
03:18Because I won?
03:19Not because you won.
03:21Because I tried my best?
03:23You tried your best and you didn't?
03:27You didn't give up.
03:29And that's when I knew that in here, you were born to be a wrestler.
03:35When Cookie walks in her room, she's fierce.
03:38She has this swagger to her and she brings that onto the mat and her mentality, her intensity is just
03:43at another level.
03:44She just goes 110%.
03:47Dude, she wants it. She wants it.
03:49And when she does something wrong, she walks off the mat and the first thing she says,
03:53what did I do wrong and show me how to fix it.
03:57She's definitely determined and hates to lose.
04:06You have to keep your composure so the emotion doesn't get the best of you.
04:12I need to start pushing myself to get to the goal.
04:15Thumbs up. Drive, drive, drive.
04:18Being the best is really important for me. It's really good to be winning it.
04:25In terms of confidence, I don't think there's another sport that's going to do for girls what wrestling is doing
04:32for them.
04:33I want girls in the sport of wrestling to be equal to boys.
04:37It becomes like an inspiration to other people and it's almost like it's contagious.
04:42I would love for women's wrestling to get to the point where stories like cookies aren't as amazing because it's
04:51the norm.
