Sunnyside graduate Audrey Jimenez, sophomore at Lehigh, has earned the No. 1 seed at 110 pounds in the inaugural NC Women’s Wrestling Championships that will take place at Coralville, Iowa next weekend.
Jimenez’s opening match will be against Ahsia Torres (13-3) of Sacred Heart. Jimenez was one of four Super Region 2 champions for Lehigh and enters the postseason at 18-0.
The first session of the NC Women’s Wrestling Championships are set for Friday at 8 a.m., Tucson time, at Xtream Arena in Coralville. Session II will follow at 2 p.m. Next Saturday, the action begins at 8 a.m. with the championship finals set for 5 p.m. Streaming coverage of the entire tournament will be available on ESPN+.
Jimenez is the lone unbeaten wrestler in the 110-pound bracket.
The No. 2 seed Sage Mortimer, a senior at Grand Valley (Mich.) State, is 16-1.
Jimenez wrestled Mortimer in 2024 during the Olympic trials. She secured a 10-6 win over Mortimer in the challenge tournament finals. Mortimer scored the first four points before Jimenez reeled off 10 straight.
The victory enabled Jimenez to advance to the finals, where she competed against veteran Sarah Hildebrandt for the 50-kilogram (110-pound) women’s freestyle spot on the U.S. Olympic team for the Paris Olympics. Hildebrandt prevailed in the best-of-three series with Jimenez and eventually won the gold medal in the Olympics.
Jimenez was a three-time Arizona girls state champion and a one-time boys state champion at Sunnyside.
After winning girls high school titles as a freshman, sophomore and junior, she won an appeal with the Arizona Interscholastic Association to compete against boys and made history by becoming the first Arizona girl to win a state wrestling title against boys, capturing the Division I title at 106 pounds.
Jimenez was a two-time U17 World Championships team member, winning a bronze medal in 2021, and a two-time U20 World Championships team member, earning silver medals in 2022 and 2023. She won a silver medal at the U23 World Championships in 2023 and a bronze medal at the Pan-American Championships in 2024.
Jimenez has done motivational speeches and training sessions for youth wrestlers in Tucson, while also volunteering at local nursing homes.
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