As a senior at Washington High School, Annelise Obermark finished just one win short of her ultimate goal at the time.
She made it to the championship match of the 140-pound weight class in the Class 2 Missouri State High School Girls Wrestling Championships but fell to three-time state champion Sevi Aumua 6-3 in the title bout to finish as a runner-up.
She had the same fate as a junior, she took second place in the 135-pound division, falling to Parkway South’s Janiah Jones 12-6 in the title bout. Obermark came close to winning the big one, but fell just short.
However, while wrestling at Simpson College, the untapped potential was still there for the now junior. She showed that during the 2026 USA Women’s National Championships & World Team Trials at the Podium in Spokane, Wash.
In the under-23, 68-kilogram division, she notched the biggest win of her wrestling career in a tournament that featured some of the best women’s wrestlers in the United States. She finished the event with a 6-1 record and defeated Noelle Gaffney in a best of three series in the championship round to take first place.
The then-sophomore accomplished that after finishing in fifth place in the 68-kilogram, under-20 division in the same tournament. Despite winning her fifth-place match 10-0 against Sydney Perry of North Central College, she was left unsatisfied after finishing 5-2 in the bracket.
“My mindset for the U20 tournament wasn’t as good as it was for U23s,” Obermark said. “I won but I didn’t compete how I went for the U20s. So I had to work on a mindset switch. I thought to myself, ‘I am tired of getting my butt kicked by some of these younger kids.’
“I wouldn’t let them get a takedown, but I wouldn’t fight. I kind of had to sit there and have a talk with myself and be like, ‘Hey, you know, you’re being kind of soft right now. You need to like turn this around if you want to get somewhere with wrestling. No more Mrs. Nice gal.’”
So after that, she started watching motivational videos on Reels and Instagram, which helped get her “hyped up,” she said.
One featured a quote on a video that her head coach at Simpson College, Jeff McGinness, shared with her.
“There’s two wolves. One is chained up in the light, one is chained up in the dark, which one, you know, survives?” Obermark said. “Most people would say the one in the light, but it’s really just the one you feed.
“So like feeding those negative thoughts compared to feeding the positive thoughts, it’s just what you tell yourself really. You should be sprinting towards your, like, craziest dreams and desires. I don’t want to look back one day and regret and think I could have done better, but I just tell myself, I’m here now at the moment. That was the gist of those motivational videos.”
Those videos helped push her to a five-match win streak to set her up with a best two out of three series with Grand Valley State’s Noelle Gaffney. Obermark lost the first match by a 2-1 decision. Going into the second match, Obermark did some reflecting.
“I was exhausted,” Obermark said. “I was fighting thoughts in my head of, ‘Hey, I got to the finals. That’s good enough. I have never been here before anyway.’ I was just done.”
However, after a talk with McGinness, she reset and won her final two matches with Gaffney with decisions of 10-3 and 6-0 to claim the U23, 68-kilogram title as she wrestled a total of 14 matches in four days.
“Finally making that jump to improve my mindset really paid off for me,” Obermark said. Coming back from that first loss was hard, but I had to prove to myself that I can do hard things and I can wrestle good people and that I belong here.
“The fatigue was definitely there, but yeah, it took some grit, I’m not going to lie.”
Her technique was sharp in those final two matches, as well.
“I hit my signature move, my dragon, my double, and I even hit some sweeps, which I normally don’t hit,” Obermark said. “I was able to get to my stuff and that really helped me out a lot. I’m definitely growing a lot in my technique and I’m getting more comfortable.”
The win qualified for the Pan-American Wrestling Championships at Xtream Arena in Coralville, Iowa, but she was unable to make it due to attending her brother Calvin’s wedding. Gaffney wrestled in her place and won the gold medal.
“I’m excited for her and glad that she got that opportunity, but next year, that spot’s mine,” Obermark said.
The tournament win was the highlight of Obermark’s college wrestling career which included an All-American honor and a fifth-place finish in the 145-pound weight division of the inaugural NCAA Women’s Wrestling Championships in March.
She accomplished the feat after being out six weeks with a sprained ankle. Obermark and teammate Keeley Kehrli were the first women wrestlers in the short history of the program to earn All-American honors.
And while Obermark has already accomplished quite a bit in two years wrestling at the college level. She has bigger goals in mind. Last week, she was training at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. to prepare for the 2026-27 season.
“I’m not going to put any limits on myself,” Obermark said. “I want to go to the top. I am going to put a lot of work in during the offseason and make a run at a national title next year. I also want to qualify for some world teams and I want to wrestle in the Olympics some day.”
