Daily Journal Girls’ Wrestler of the Year: HMB’s Jamie Micallef

So, when Micallef decided to step away from the sport in middle school, it was something of a surprise. She spent four years focusing on water sports — swimming, water polo and some recreational surfing — but the HMB coaching staff, knowing she was destined for greatness, pestered her nonstop to return to the mat.

“Oh my gosh, I think from the moment I quit all the way until I decided to come back,” Micallef said. “They would always have to say something about it.”

In just the second year of her wrestling comeback, Micallef has been named Daily Journal Girls’ Wrestler of the Year.

With a 44-9 record as a senior, Micallef enjoyed a postseason like no other girls’ wrestler in Half Moon Bay history. After defaulting to a Peninsula Athletic League championship at 157 pounds — no other PAL wrestler wanted to face her — she reached the podium with a third-place finish at the Central Coast Section championships to qualify for the state meet.

It was at the CIF State Wrestling Championships where she made history, becoming the first HMB wrestler to reach the podium since girls’ wrestling was sanctioned by the California Interscholastic Federation in 2014. The senior posted a 5-2 record in the three-day tournament, finishing in fifth place at 155s.

“I think her legacy is she has been the first girl to place at the CIF state tournament since it’s been sanctioned, so that’s a huge accomplishment,” Temko said. “And obviously for me as a coach, for the coaching staff we’ve had … it’s our first CIF state placer that we’ve kind of trained, just us.”

Temko said Micallef always had the potential for greatness. Watching her walk away from the sport when she was in middle school was a problem he became determined to solve. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy wrestling. Sure, she’s never been an aficionado of jiujitsu like the rest of her family —  “I was never really into the martial arts,” she said — but wrestling always had an allure, especially when she attended the 2022 CCS championships and watched her sister win the 137s title.

“I was like: ‘Oh my gosh, I wasn’t able to do that. I want that to be me,’” Micallef said.

But it was a sibling rivalry with that very sister that drove her away from wrestling to being with. When Micallef was in sixth grade, she got paired with her sister Taylor, then in eighth grade, as a sparring partner. Saying it didn’t go well is an understatement. Things immediately descended into chaos between the two.

“You don’t really want to put two sisters together to fight,” Micallef said. “It’s going to get dirty. Taylor was also a lot more experienced than I was … and I think teaching me kind of frustrated her, because I didn’t know what to do.”

That chaos compelled Micallef to storm out of the mat room, not to return for four years.

“We cried and we fought and we screamed at each other pretty much every practice,” Micallef said. “I didn’t like it. I said: ‘I’m going back to swim.’”

Leading separate athletics lives was the best thing for the sisters, who eventually mended fences and became closer than ever. During Taylor’s CCS championship run, the younger Micallef grew into one of her sister’s biggest fans. All the while, Temko continued working on her to give the sport another shot.

“It’s crazy because we brought her with us to state for Taylor’s senior year, and we’re sitting there looking at the girls she would be competing against in her weight class,” Temko said, “and we said: ‘Jaime, if you come back and commit, you could come back here in two years and place.’”

Micallef glimpsed her potential earlier in her senior season, taking second place at two high-profile tournaments, the Napa Valley Classic and the Lady MidCals in Gilroy. There were some frustrations. She was on the road to the 157s championship in Napa, leading late in the third period of the finals before a two-point reversal by champion American Canyon junior Jaslynn Aken denied Micallef the title.

However, earlier in the tournament, wrestling as the No. 5 seed, Micallef knocked off No. 1-seed Rosalynn Diaz of Liberty-Brentwood with a first-period pin.

“That’s when I knew,” Micallef said. “I was like: ‘OK, I’m fine.’”

Then the student who felt terrorized by being paired with her sister as a practice partner became the master. At the PAL tournament, anyone who could wrestle at 157s opted to move either up or down a weight class. She was crowned with an uncontested PAL title.

At the CCS Masters Tournament two weeks later, Micallef was ready and rested. She pinned her first two opponents before falling to eventual champion Angelinah De Leon of Santa Clara. That left her needing to win two straight matches in the auxiliary bracket in order to realize the dream of reaching the state meet.

She did just that, pinning both Annette Beltran of Silver Creek and Kimmora Teo of Wilcox.

“I was just super happy to be making it to state and doing what my sister did,” Micallef said, “and doing literally what I had practiced all season for.”

It all goes back to Micallef having had enough of the pestering and putting four years worth of Temko’s strategic irritation and annoyance to rest.

“And the rest,” Temko said, “is history.”