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A pageant queen … on Short Time? Yes, Arielle Rosmarino is our guest on Episode 71 of the Short Time Wrestling Podcast.

Arielle Rosmarino rocks her Glenvar High School wrestling shirt routinely.

Rosmarino was a recent contestant during the Miss USA Pageant held on Sunday, June 8 in Baton Rogue, Louisiana. For those watching, they might have been shocked at what sport Rosmarino chose to showcase that made her unique — wrestling.

So how does the Salem, Virginia native and reigning Miss Virginia USA incorporate wrestling? Easy, she was a wrestler at Glenvar High School.

The 22-year-old Radford University graduate talks about how she got started in wrestling and what made wrestling so important to her through high school, college and still to this day. Unable to compete after her junior year due to chronic headaches, she stuck around the sport and eventually worked with the NCWA program at Radford, a small public university near Virginia Tech in Southwest Virginia.

Rosmarino gives a lot of credit to her high school coach, a two-time state champion from Glenvar named Jamie Soltis, as well.

Rosmarino does motivational speaking and a big part of it, as she puts it, is from the skills and lessons learned from wrestling.

Some questions Arielle Rosmarino answered in Episode 71 of the Short Time Wrestling Podcast were:

• There's sometimes a stigma about girls and women who wrestle and on the opposite side of the spectrum, there's a stigma about girls and women who do pageants. What misconceptions do you try to break down on both sides of that discussion?
• In your part of the state, wrestling is a pretty popular sport. How much support did you receive from the wrestling community in Southwest Virginia when you were crowned Miss Virginia USA?
• In the movie Whip It, Ellen Page played a role of a teenage pageant contestant who broke away and entered the world of roller derby. For girls who might have similar interests that involve any sport, what's some advice you can give those girls who like to get rough, but also like to dress up and still be “girly?”
• What advice do you have for parents of girls and young women who have daughters who might want to step into wrestling?
• What do you think about Virginia going to six classes?
• Can anyone dethrone Christiansburg?

Follow Arielle Rosmarino on Twitter @realmissvausa

Find out more about her at MissVirginiaUSA.com

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