Wrestling juggernaut: Sandia's Jaden Meadows heads into metros with a loss in high school

Jaden Meadows admits — with a modest smile — that her status on a wrestling mat carries symbolic weight.

Her status is this: The Sandia junior is arguably New Mexico’s best pound-for-pound girls wrestler. She is undefeated for her entire prep career, and is one of the state’s most dominant athletes in any sport.

Her Matadors career is basically comprised of short bursts of activity on the mat in the form of lightning-fast pins. She likes it that way.

“That’s kind of how I see it,” she said. “It’s, like, a challenge, to see how quick I can get in and get out. It gives me an adrenaline rush.”

Meadows on Saturday will be chasing a title at 165 pounds during the Albuquerque Metro Championships at Rio Grande High School. Already this calendar year, she’s bagged elite victories at the Conflict at Cleveland, and also the Joe Vivian Classic.

And it’s not just Meadows’ 17-0 record this season that stands out, And it’s not entirely about her 81-0 overall record since she arrived at Sandia, including 26-0 as a freshman and 38-0 last season.

The journey for Meadows has been as impressive as the destination.

She’s won every one of her eight state tournament matches by pin, for example, none of them lasting longer than 101 seconds.

This is standard for Meadows. She has never been involved in a prep match that reached the third period. Asked how many of her matches even reached the second period, Meadows paused.

“Maybe two?” she finally said. She wasn’t completely sure.

The last time Meadows lost to anyone, anywhere, was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she said, when she was an eighth-grader.

But she’s not missed a beat in her nearly three seasons. With a combination of power, experience and technique, skill sets she’s been honing since she was 5, Meadows has yet to face a single girl in the state who can compete with her.

Might that change on Saturday?

Cleveland junior Eloise Woolsey, who also is undefeated this season (27-0), is moving up in weight to 165 pounds for metros which is sure to put her on a literal collision course with Meadows. Woolsey, a transfer from Hawaii, has won other major events, like the Conflict at Cleveland, plus big events in Missouri and Arizona, at lighter weights, specifically 152 pounds.

One metro-area coach rated Meadows and Woolsey as the two best girls in the state, in any weight class.

“When it’s time, when she’s pushed, that’s when she’ll flip the switch. Nobody’s made her flip the switch yet,” said Sandia girls wrestling coach Abby Eucker. “It’s the match everybody wants to watch.”

Meadows started wrestling at age 5, inspired by her older brother Jameer. She said one day, they were picking him up from practice, where he was involved in a King of the Mat competition, and Jaden decided to give it a try. She actually won a couple of matches against boys, she said.

“He’s the main reason I got into it,” Jaden said. “I guess I just wanted to follow in his footsteps, to show that girls can actually wrestle and that it’s not just a boys sport. Even though back then it was all boys. You rarely saw any girls.”

Girls wrestling became an official New Mexico Activities Association sport in 2019-20. This is its sixth season. Based on data from NMAA Associate Director Scott Owen, there were 75 to 100 girls the first season and 833 this season, he said, which is roughly an 800% increase in participation numbers.

Albuquerque Public Schools said it didn’t yet have the number of girls wrestling participants for this season. It was 156 last year, APS said.

Meadows said she once had a passion to be the “face of New Mexico (girls wrestling)” and now she is one of the most prominent names in the sport.

“I want to bring attention to girls, show that girls can also dominate in a male-dominated sport,” she said.

What most appeals to her about wrestling, Meadows said, is the sense of individual responsibility and accountability, the notion that your success is not tied to the performance of others.

She often had to compete against boys as a young girl, and Meadows said she would like to see more girls join the sport. Not many girls have the same dozen years behind them that Meadows already has, which is one reason why she felt she’d excel at Sandia.

“I kind of figured I’d be able to dominate,” she said.

She won state at 152 pounds as a freshman and sophomore, and said she’s leaning toward dropping back down to 152 for her senior season. Meadows said her ambition is to complete four years of high school competition with the Matadors without a loss. She also plays volleyball and runs some track, and hopes that those other two sports will help her shed the weight needed to return to 152 next winter.

“She’s strong, she’s smart, she’s one of those girls where, they’re coming for (her),” Eucker said. “It’s (her) match to lose.”

Meadows does hope to land a college wrestling scholarship, although that situation remains fluid with a relatively limited number of Division I programs. There are only about five dozen schools that offer D-1 women’s wrestling.

But the number has risen sharply in recent years, giving Meadows belief that girls in New Mexico who previously shunned wrestling might change their mind.

“Now girls are seeing other girls wrestling, and they’re, like, ‘Let’s try it.’ It’s a pretty good sport, if you’re an individual person,” she said. “Here it needs to grow a whole lot. … It’s not just for boys. They don’t have to be scared.”