She took injury time, regained as much feeling in her legs as she could and continued to wrestle. The Hughesville native knew there was a distinct possibility she wasn’t going to be able to get through he four scheduled matches at the tournament. But she’s a fifth-year senior, the only one on the Oklahoma City University women’s wrestling team. She lost her national tournament last March when the COVID-19 outbreak canceled it and she wanted to wrestle one final season.

So she wrestled. The fractured vertebra in her back was something she had been dealing with for the better part of 18 months. While she could wrestle with it, it sometimes left her in pain and sometimes left her lower extremities completely numb. That came from the case of spondylotlisthesis she developed, a condition in which one of her vertebrae would slip out of place onto the vertebra below it, pinching the nerves and causing her legs to go numb.

Gregoire lost that first match, 12-2. The feeling hadn’t completely returned to her legs when it was time to wrestle her second match. She never saw the end of that match, injury defaulting 2 1/2 minutes in. She defaulted in her final two matches before taking the mat.

It was far from the way Gregoire wanted to end her career. She had aspirations of being an All-American, but her body never cooperated with her plan.

PHOTO PROVIDED Oklahoma City University's Marissa Gregoire, right, wrestles Texas Weslyan's Madison Brown during the Sooner Athletic Conference tournament in February.

Gregoire’s career ended in February as she decided to finally have the surgery necessary to fix the fractured vertebra in her back. It’s a career she never expected to last as long as it did when she asked her dad to join Hughesville’s wrestling team as a junior. But it’s a career which has helped her find a sport she grew to love. It’s a sport which helped her earn both an undergraduate and Master’s degree from college. And it’s one which took her all across the country.

“I absolutely would do it all again,” Gregoire said recently. “My dad has always said growing up that a little bit of adversity is a good thing. I didn’t understand what he meant until I started wrestling. Wrestling prepares you for a lot in life. I feel like I learned discipline and hard work. I thought I was a hard-worker before, but then I started wrestling. All of my experiences, good and bad in college, have prepared me for life after wrestling.”

Gregoire’s career in wrestling extended far beyond anything she could have imagined when she talked to her dad, Raymond, about joining Hughesville’s program during her junior year. Raymond wrestled collegiately at Mansfield and was a long-time coach in Hughesville’s junior high program. He tried to talk Gregoire out of going out for the wrestling team.

He explained how everything was stacked against her being successful. He tried to explain just how hard it was going to be. He explained that it wasn’t going to be fun.

Gregoire didn’t listen. All she knew was Steve Budman’s varsity team didn’t have a 106-pounder and she could easily make 106 pounds if she skipped lunch. She had a background in gymnastics, competing up through eighth grade. She was athletic and flexible, but other than entering a tournament when she was 7 or 8 years old, Gregoire had no experience in wrestling.

PHOTO PROVIDED Oklahoma City University's Marissa Gregoire, right, fights for hand control with Texas Weslyan's Madison Brown during the Sooner Athletic Conference tournament in February.

She thought she would show up to practice every day and when the other team didn’t have a 106-pounder, she would talk out and take a forfeit. The only problem was she earned just one forfeit that year and Budman didn’t hide her from any opponent.

That is until an early February dual against Benton. Gregoire was set to face returning state third-place finisher Alan Diltz and Budman decided he would hold Gregoire out of the lineup that night. But as she sat on the bench and watched her teammates wrestle, Gregoire didn’t think it was right they all went out and competed while she just watched. So midway through the dual, she approached Budman and said she wanted to wrestle even if it was against Diltz.

Much like every match that season, she knew her job was to go out and prevent bonus points as best she could. Diltz pinned her in 6 seconds that night. But it was the night where it felt like Gregoire became a true wrestler.

“(Budman) understood the struggles I was facing,” Gregoire said. “He tried to be strategic about it and not put me out there against a state runner-up and try to keep me safe. But he saw after that match (against Diltz) that I’m not scared. He worked with me and spent extra time with me after practice. He wanted me to be successful and he really cared.”

She was willing to handle anything thrown at her that first year, and as a senior she managed to pick up her first two wins in contested bouts, one a 2-0 decision and one a fall. When she entered the sectional tournament that year, she figured it was likely going to be the end of her wrestling career. But someone asked she and her father if they had looked into women’s wrestling in college. It was a sport which was beginning to gain traction as programs popped up all across the country.

It wasn’t something Gregoire had considered until that moment. Her plan was to go to the University of Scranton on an ROTC scholarship. But that night she went home and looked into women’s wrestling programs online and filled out recruiting questionnaires for both Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas, and Oklahoma City University. She was shocked to hear back from the coaches at Lyon that night.

Eventually, Gregoire scheduled a trip to see both Lyon and OCU in the same trip. By the end of the trip, she decided she wanted pass on her scholarship to Scranton and try to wrestle. She questioned whether she was good enough because she didn’t have much success in high school, but she thought if she could get into a scenario where she was wrestling other girls, maybe she could be successful.

But almost immediately, her body began to fight her ambitions to wrestle in college. She had reconstructive shoulder surgery as a freshman. As a sophomore she had another surgery on that shoulder as a revision to the procedure the year before.

Finally healthy, she was convinced her junior season was going to be the one where she broke through. But just before her first competition, she got into a weird position at practice. When she went to stand up, she fell back down. She had a shooting pain in her back and her legs went numb.

“I started freaking out. I started crying. I’m like, ‘Oh no, I’m paralyzed.’ It was so scary,” Gregoire said. “The next day I found out my vertebra was fractured. I had to sit out six to eight weeks to see if it would heal on its own.”

The tricky thing about a back injury like that is there really isn’t much rehab that can be done to help the healing process. She strengthened her core by doing ab workouts like crazy.

Her mother, Jemma, was freaked out about the injury and tried to impress upon her wrestling wasn’t all that important in the grand scheme of the rest of her life and how worsening the injury could affect her later. But Gregoire decided to stay with it. She had already missed two seasons and didn’t want to miss any more time.

She didn’t compete much that season. She would practice until the pain got so bad that she had to sit out and ride the bike for the remainder of practice. She described the whole season as being one step forward and two steps back consistently. She tried different injections for pain, but because she kept wrestling things never got any better.

As a senior during the 2019-2020 season, she went 2-2 at the Missouri Valley Open in November of 2019, injury defaulting out of her final two matches after winning twice by fall. She didn’t compete again until a handful of duals in mid-January where she went 2-2. And competing in the first ever Sooner Athletic Conference Tournament in February, she took second place at 101 pounds.

It was the justification she sought for choosing the path she did. It made everything worth it. It was when she developed a ton of confidence in herself and her ability. So when the national tournament was canceled a week later as the COVID-19 pandemic set in nationwide, Gregoire was crestfallen. She figured, again, her career was over. She just didn’t want it to be.

So Gregoire looked into the possibility of coming back for a fifth season. She redshirted as a sophomore, so she knew she had a year of eligibility left. And OCU had a one-year MBA program in which she could enroll after graduating with a degree in marketing last spring. She decided she was up for one more year of wrestling. Her back, though, never got the memo.

She tried to compete in this year’s Sooner Athletic Conference tournament where she was to wrestle four matches. She injury defaulted in her second match and didn’t wrestle her final two.

Gregoire had done as much rehabilitation as she possibly could for her back. But unlike her shoulder, which she could strengthen the muscles around to help stabilize it, there is really no fix for a bad back other than having it surgically repaired. That one final tournament helped her realize it was time to take the next step and have her back repaired properly.

But not even any of the injuries she’s dealt with in her time at OCU could lead her to regret the decision to wrestle in college. In fact, she would encourage more young women to take the leap and get started in the sport as well.

“It’s not going to be easy, but it’ll be worth it,” Gregoire said. “I think who I am today has largely been shaped by wrestling. I’ve faced a lot of adversity and had the odds stacked against me, but I feel like it was worth it in the end. It’s made me pretty tough.

“I’m trying to be thankful and realize everything wrestling has given me. I don’t regret wrestling at all.”