When she first stepped into her classroom, she didn’t expect to just be a math teacher — she intended to be involved in something she’s been fascinated in for a while: wrestling.

When girls wrestling head coach Maria Mulero arrived at Hebron, she contacted wrestling head coach Jacob Green and offered her assistance for the team. After serving as the wrestling team’s assistant coach, Mulero was named the school’s first girls wrestling head coach this year.

“I wanted to help girls do something I like to do,” Mulero said. “In math, I can help you with math. But when you’re coaching a sport, you get to see another side of your students that you can’t see in the classroom. It helps me remember who I was [as] a teenager in a sport that’s mainly for boys.”

Mulero was a geometry and algebra teacher at Lewisville High School’s Harmon campus, but said she was always interested in wrestling. She started wrestling during her freshman year of high school. After graduation, she founded a wrestling program at the University of Houston, while earning her Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics. She first met Green at Harmon.

“I didn’t realize how much she was into combat sports and her background with wrestling,” Green said. “She does a good job at keeping the girls honest. It was harder for me to do that as a male coach.”

Mulero began practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu after her second year of teaching at Harmon. When she first started at Hebron, she was attending Southern Methodist University for her Master’s of Education.

“I would train in the morning,” Mulero said. “[After,] I would come [to Hebron] for work, stay after school for wrestling, then drive to [my] college courses. I was being really strict with my schedule.”

When the girls wrestling team at Hebron originally started in 2017, it consisted of only three members. Mulero visited feeder middle schools to encourage students to join the official girls wrestling team when they got to high school.

“With wrestling, you deal with a lot of losses and people who want to quit,” Mulero said. “That happens every year. I’m seeing people get burnt out, but [I] guide them through a difficult time.”

Officially getting a separate class from boys wrestling gave Mulero the chance to step up this year from an assistant coach to head coach. Girls wrestling captain junior Annalisa Afrifa said there is a lot more focus on the girls after they got separate coaches.

“[Coach Mulero is] more so like a friend and a coach at the same time,” Afrifa said. “She’s not like other coaches I meet, [because] it’s hard to find a coach we [can] have a personal relationship with.”

Although there are challenges that all players face, Mulero said there are some only girls will experience.

“You have a girl whose parents aren’t really supportive and that’s always tough,” Mulero said. “If it was a boy, [the parents] would be there for them. Then you have another girl [challenged] with managing her weight. Social media-wise, [they] see it as, ‘Oh we just want to be skinny,’ but for wrestling, the idea isn’t to be skinny. The idea is to be strong at your weight.”

Last year, there were male and female wrestlers with only two years of experience who placed third at regionals, but no one advanced as a state qualifier. This year, four members advanced to state.

“[After coach Mulero joined,] there was a turning point in girls wrestling especially,” Afrifa said. “She’s brought her own twist to the team. There’s definitely been an improvement.”

Mulero said her goal is to have full varsity and junior varsity lineups that fill all 12 weight classes, along with separate periods for both of them in the future.

“I’ve always loved the sport,” Mulero said. “It teaches me a lot about the other side of education. It’s helped me grow in a different way, helping people out in different scenarios.”

This story was originally published on The Hawk Eye on February 21, 2025.