By Michael Letendre

At the 2022 CIAC Girls Wrestling Invite, Bristol Eastern’s Ella Nichols did what she set out to do – capture an individual state championship.

And from the Floyd Little Athletic Center in New Haven over Saturday and Sunday, Nichols captured the title at 152 pounds as the nationally ranked competitor turned away all the challengers.

Also, Bristol Central’s Araya Guilmette did extremely well at the event – cashing in on a third place showing at 138 pounds.

In the third place bout, Guilmette pinned Renee Bunn from Killingly in 1:42 to snare an excellent finish.

“Araya Guilmette makes history [as the] first girl [from Central] to place at the CT Girl’s State Championships,” said Bristol Central’s wrestling account on Twitter.

Nichols needed just 1:12 to pin New Haven’s Alexandria Gorman in the championship match as the Eastern grappler took the top prize at 152.

Overall, Nichols nabbed Eastern 11th place overall with 26 total points.

That finished also tied with Guilford as those two programs, along with Bethel and Foran, were the four teams from New Haven to earn single first place finishers without placing anywhere else on the card.

Three programs had three girls finish in the top six as Amity (58 points) won the second ever event.

Amity tallied first, second and third place tallies at the invite to snare the Open title.

Berlin (55 points) was the runner up – snaring two second place finishes – while Norwalk (46) earned a third place nod.

There were 10 different weight classes in 2022 which included classes that started at 99 pounds and then to 235 on the flip side.

Nichols needed just over two total minutes to tally her three wins in quarterfinal, semifinal, and finals action.

She won all three of those matches via pin-fall and in the semifinal bout, against Olivia Cicarelli of Killingly, Nichols needed just 19 seconds to win and qualify for the finals.

Nicholas was the number one rated grappler at 152 pounds.

She also wrestled in the boys 2022 Class L tournament, going all the way to the quarterfinals before falling via pin-fall.

At the 2020 event, the first ever sanctioned girls invite in Connecticut, Nicholas won the championship at 145 pounds, defeating Aida Flores of Montville in just over a minute.

Over fifty programs took part of the event in 2022 which should continue to grow each and every year as girls wrestling continues to push forward in the state.