Pueblo HS wrestling star Elizabeth Valenzuela Smith part of championship legacy

Elizabeth Valenzuela Smith has a twinkle in her eye when talking about the sport of wrestling.

No matter what part — be it sharing details about her technique on the mat, the time she spends training in her school’s wrestling room or watching loads and loads of film — the spark is evident with the 15-year-old Pueblo High School sophomore-to-be.

It’s also apparent when she talks about following in the footsteps of her grandfather, Orlando, and her dad, Josiah.

She’s certainly done that already — not just by taking on the sport, but in becoming a third-generation Pueblo Warrior state champion wrestler.

“When I was younger, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to be a state (champion).’ That was my whole goal; I just had to win state,” she said. “Then, coming into Pueblo in August, I was like ‘OK, I’m here. Let me just dial in and focus on what I’ve set myself out to do since I was like 8 (years old).”

Winning the Arizona Division I girls wrestling title in the 107-pound weight class in February put Elizabeth in that rare air.

The Smiths are believed to be the first family in Arizona to have three generations of state champions, all from the same school. Orlando Smith got it rolling, winning in 1974 and 1975 (138 pounds), and Josiah Smith, who is also Elizabeth’s coach, won in 1998 (145 pounds).

It’s clear Elizabeth has grown up with the sport; she wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.

“Being surrounded with (wrestling) my entire life, it did feel natural to just do it all the time. It was just like a given that this is the road I’d go down.”

The family tree extends from there. Her older brothers, Mozes and Jozeph, also wrestle and have placed at the state championships, while her mom, Leticia Valenzuela Smith, also coaches.

Josiah never thought he’d be coaching. He “just wanted to be a dad,” who maybe helped out once in a while. But once he started coming to the wrestling room at Pueblo he got hooked on the sport again.

For Elizabeth, being coached by her dad is just about all she’s known. She admitted that yes, there have been “ups and down” like with any coach-athlete dynamic, but she thinks it has “created a strong relationship and a lot of trust.”

Family focus

Elizabeth has been an elite wrestler for quite some time. More recently, her top finishes away from the high school circuit included taking third in the U15 USA Wrestling Pan American Team Trials last August and winning the title at the 16U and Junior Folkstyle Nationals in March.

She’s also already earned eight All-America honors.

Elizabeth said that, in a way, she was relieved when she won that first state championship in February.

“My Tata (Orlando) was excited to see me and my brother compete at state,” she said. “Knowing that I continued the legacy of the whole thing was like ‘Wow! Something new just happened here.’”

Elizabeth admitted that she felt the pressure to win and continue the tradition, but once she lost her first and only match of the season — she went 34-1 as a freshman — she let go of it all and just wrestled.

Josiah said he just knew his daughter was going to win: “She looked ready,” he said of the state competition. “She was confident.”

Meanwhile, Leticia, Elizabeth’s mother, sat up in the stands with both sets of grandparents. Leticia said that all the early success “has kept (Elizabeth) hungry to keep learning and always get better.”

Now that a state title is in hand, that means focusing on more of her development. That includes building toward making a Worlds team and winning a national freestyle title.

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Josiah said Elizabeth being a “cerebral wrestler” is what makes his daughter stand out.

“She’s able to think on the mat and she’s able to make mid-match corrections, which is really hard for some athletes to do,” Josiah said. “She can do it.”

In addition to her high school team, Elizabeth finds comfort in having her own personal team to lean on. That’s especially the case when it comes to her brothers, who she knows always have her back; when she’s struggling with anything on the mat, they are her first stop for advice.

Despite virtually every member of the family being so intertwined with the sport, the Smiths don’t actually eat/sleep/study/train wrestling day in and day out. (Well, almost — but not quite.)

Academically, Elizabeth is also part of Pueblo’s college prep academy track. The program ensures PHS students have the correct coursework and other preparation in place to not only gain acceptance to colleges of varying prestige, but also provides resources for finding scholarships and other tuition assistance, among other features.

Additionally, Josiah said he put the mats away at home and they only talk wrestling in the gym or when one of his children bring it up.

Building her own legacy

As Elizabeth walked into Pueblo’s stuffy wrestling room on a recent Monday afternoon, in gray Team USA Nike sweatpants and a light blue long-sleeve top, with her long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, she was reminded of the legacy of not only her family but also all of the Warriors who came before her.

Photos line the walls of Pueblo’s wrestling room, commemorating each year’s teams back to 1959, as well as individual state champions and finishers. The room is so packed with photos that the school is about to add another row of frames.

“I love it,” Elizabeth said. “I think just knowing the history that Pueblo wrestling has — (it’s) the foundation of (where) I am on now. It’s really cool to know that I am not the first; there’s always a first somewhere else. I can be like, ‘Oh, well these guys did it, I know I can do it.’”

Elizabeth Valenzuela Smith may not be the first wrestler at Pueblo or the first to win a state title, but she is the first female state wrestling champion for both Pueblo and first within the Tucson Unified School District.

Girls’ wrestling is considered one of the nation’s fastest-growing sports. Forty-five states sanction girls’ wrestling (Louisiana being the latest to add it). According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), the number of high school girls who compete in wrestling has quintupled since 2013. From 2022 to 2023 (the most recent year for which data is available from NFHS), girls’ participation nearly doubled.

The NCAA is capitalizing on the explosion in participation, announcing in February that in the winter of 2026, they expect to move women’s wrestling from an “emerging sport” to an official “championship sport.”

Tucson has seen this growth up close. Another dominant face of girls’ wrestling in the city is Audrey Jimenez, a recent grad of Sunnyside High School (part of Sunnyside Unified School District). Jimenez, who will wrestle for Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, starting this fall, won three girls state championships and this winter became the first girl to win an Arizona state title in the boys wrestling competition in the 106-pound weight class.

Jimenez is also a six-time national champion who has also competed for Team USA — winning three silver medals at Worlds and one bronze medal. She is an alternate for the U.S. wrestling team for the 2024 Paris Olympics this summer.

Elizabeth Valenzuela Smith embraces the special place she holds in school history, her family and even girls’ wrestling and yet, she knows that all those who came before her — like Jimenez and others — have paved the path she is on.

“It’s taken thousands of young women to help me get to where I am today,” she said. “If one girl didn’t wrestle, I don’t think I’d be where I am today, which is cool.”

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