For younger athletes - women, especially, if it's a male-dominated sport - I'd say be very careful to just be true to yourself. I spent a lot of time trying to emulate how a male wrestler was. They're tough, they're very confident, they don't show a lot of emotion, and they push through everything. That's not me at all. I'm a wrestler but I have emotions, I'm sensitive. When I stopped trying to be something that I wasn't, I felt like I was freeing myself up to find ways to make it work for myself.

For younger athletes - women, especially, if it's a male-dominated sport - I'd say be very careful to just be true to yourself. I spent a lot of time trying to emulate how a male wrestler was. They're tough, they're very confident, they don't show a lot of emotion, and they push through everything. That's not me at all. I'm a wrestler but I have emotions, I'm sensitive. When I stopped trying to be something that I wasn't, I felt like I was freeing myself up to find ways to make it work for myself.

Just be true to you. What works for me might not work for someone else and what works for someone else might not work for me.

The thing is, people don't understand that girls right now are being forced to have to pick one or the other. You are being forced to have to choose wrestling or an education. I got a scholarship going to school in Canada, but it was pretty expensive because I was an international student. And so for some girls right now, they don't have the means or the opportunities to do both. A lot of girls are obviously choosing an education because you need a future and a career and everything, and wrestling can't promise everyone that. I think that's a huge barrier.