Under dim, shadowy lighting, the room’s emptiness causes an echo, and as coach Edward Holland’s encouragement ricochets off of walls and the raised ceiling, the room’s suffocating humidity saturates his words with every bounce they take until they’re nearly drenched when they make it to the girls who are grappling on the bright red mat in the center of the floor.
If you closed your eyes, you could fool yourself into believing you’re laid out on some tropical island, but instead of the aroma of coconut and high tide’s mist, fumes of hard work and gym socks infiltrate the nostril.
This is the space where Baylor senior Vivi Christopoulos built a program.
Upon arriving at Baylor School as a rising sophomore, Christopoulos joined the rowing team, but the Knoxville native couldn’t shake the feeling she had when she watched a wrestling match the year prior at Knoxville Catholic High School.
“I saw that you could beat people up and it was okay,” said Christopoulos with a grin. “I wanted the chance to do that too,” she said, her grin growing into a chuckle.
Vivi’s dream of taking the mat faced a severe obstacle, however. Baylor didn’t have a women’s wrestling team. Impassioned and audacious, Vivi went right to work. After the conclusion of her rowing season in the fall, she lobbied with school administration over the possibility of joining the men's team. Ultimately, however, school administration wasn’t comfortable with Vivi wrestling boys, so her proposition was shot down.
“I didn’t like that answer,” said Christopoulos. “Right after he told me no, I was crushed,” added Christopoulos.
Crushed maybe, but not deterred. Following conversations with the boys wrestling coach, meetings with the athletic director, and a one-on-one meeting with the assistant head of the school, Vivi made it clear that “this is something I want to do.”
“How can we make it work,” she asked.
Her determination paid off. Administration agreed that if Vivi could find another girl to participate alongside her, they could start a girls wrestling team. Vivi recruited then-freshman Autumn Phillips to be her teammate, and upon her agreement, Baylor’s women’s wrestling team was born. The team, nothing more than a duo in its young stage, had their patience and resolve tested from the outset.
“Every practice was geared towards the guys who had been wrestling for a long time,” said Christopoulos. “Autumn and I didn’t get the basics. We were just jumping in where we could and trying to follow along,” said Christopoulos.
The entire first year of the team, Vivi and Autumn spent their practices wrestling in the corner of the gym during boy’s team practices, waving for a coach to come and explain the directions that had been given when they didn’t understand.
No matches, no outside competition, nothing. Just practice.
The following year, Schaack Van Deusen, who was helping coach the varsity and junior varsity boys squads, was called upon to coach the girls.
“My first question was, “will the girls stay with it?”,” said Van Deusen, understanding the difficulties that the road ahead of the team would present.
Stay with it they did, and Christopoulos had a stellar junior year, her first full season of competitive wrestling, and heading into 2022, the school hired Edward Holland to be the first full-time head coach of the Baylor girls wrestling team.
Holland wrestled at Pigeon Forge High School and continued his career at The University of Cumberland in Williamsburg, Kentucky.
“I knew from the start that she could win it (State),” said Holland of Christopoulos. “It was like–alright, can she get out of her own way? She’s very strong and very aggressive, but you can be over-aggressive. You can be too much, so sometimes you have to slow it down a little bit,” said Holland.
Vivi ran through every opponent in her senior season except for one. Brooklyn Long, the defending state champion, bested Christopoulos in the final match of a mid-season tournament and was the only blemish on her eventual 18-1 record.
“As a team, I wanted more bodies in the room,” said Christopoulos. “More girls, more repetitions, things like that… But my personal goal was to win State, so I can make my mark and solidify that,” said Christopoulos. A state championship from a girl who has only wrestled for three years may seem far-fetched until you remember that the girl in question is the same one who went toe-to-toe with the administration of her school to eventually spawn the team out of thin air. Vivi’s determination alone is enough to defy the forces of conventional logic.
And what’s so hard to believe? As Vivi says, “I can do this… I put in the work and it pays off.”
Throughout the state tournament, no competitor equaled Vivi’s combination of skill, aggressiveness, and drive, though she didn’t always feel she put her best foot forward.
“My first match, I did not go out there with my best,” said Christopoulos. “And I realized it once I got on the mat,” she added.
“And you only won 10 to nothing,” Van Duesen interjected to remind her as he grinned.
The dominant tournament run led Christopoulos to a rematch with Brooklyn Long, the only wrestler to beat Vivi this season.
Vivi’s mother Xrisanthe has been a guiding light for her throughout this entire process.
“She would say to me that if I wanted to solidify girls wrestling at Baylor, this (winning State) is something that I need to strive to do,” said Christopoulos. “That’s the reality. If I wanted this program to continue and have a real shot, that was something that I needed to do,” added Christopoulos.
Xrisanthe’s support, though sincere and powerful, comes from afar as she can’t stand to watch Vivi fight.
“I’m daughter number four out of five kids, and she says, “I cannot watch my baby girl go out on a mat and get beat up or beat up other girls”,” said Christopoulos with a giggle. If seeing her daughter get beat up is what she fears, there’s no need for her to worry.
Vivi Christopoulos beat Brooklyn Long 4-2 on February 25th and completed her goal of winning a state title to become the first-ever state champion in the history of Baylor girls wrestling.
“I was shocked. It still hasn’t fully hit me,” said Christopoulos. “I just looked over at my coaches like, “Is it over? Did that just happen?”,” she added.
“I told her all year that she was going to win a state title,” said Holland. “The finals match was one of the coolest matches I’ve ever gotten to coach–and I’ve coached some pretty cool ones. What she did in three years… she is special,” said Holland.
“I actually set out, I achieved my goal, and I made Baylor history,” said Christopoulos. “For Baylor, it’s shown that you can go out, start something new and excel in it. It shows other girls that they can try a sport, be new at it, and still do well. I feel us breaking a barrier. Wrestling may have been male-dominated, but there is a shift happening,” said Christopoulos.
Vivi has had several colleges reach out to her in regards to how she plans to continue to pursue her wrestling career, and as of now, Vivi plans to attend the Coast Guard Academy where she will practice with the men’s wrestling team and study mechanical engineering. Her historic three-year stretch at Baylor is one that will influence future generations of Red Raiders to not only wrestle, but to take risks, and be determined in all that they do.
(Email Danny Webb at sports@chattanoogan.com)