If you scripted it, no one would believe it.
Peninsula Seahawks wrestler Lindsey Shipp stood on the mat inside the Tacoma Dome last February, seconds away from losing the girls state championship match at 170 pounds. The scoreboard showed the junior down 9-8 to Kennewick’s Jaylee Lopez, the 2024 state runner-up, in the third period with the clock blinking toward zero.
A few yards away, her father, Tacoma Police detective Chris Shipp, had signed up to work off-duty security, knowing his daughter would be wrestling at the tournament – but not knowing she would be battling in the last seconds for a state title. He was close enough to see every move but could only watch.
Then came the turn.
“I realized I either had to do something crazy or I was going to lose,” Shipp said. “My coaches were yelling, ‘Push the pace!’ So, I went for it.”
She didn’t shoot for the legs. Instead, she lunged, catching Lopez high, hooking the arm and head in a move wrestlers call a dresser dump, driving Lopez straight to the mat. With only two seconds left, the referee slapped the floor.
Pin.
State champion.
Across the chaos of whistles and cheers, Shipp turned and saw her father still on duty, still stunned.
“She didn’t know he was right there,” said head coach Gary Griffin. “We spun her around and said, ‘Go get your dad.’ It was like a perfect movie moment.”
That improbable finish made Shipp one of three Seahawks to win individual titles at the 2025 Mat Classic, alongside Mira Sonnen (145 lbs.) and Bailey Parker (155 lbs.). The trio won back-to-back-to-back matches, a streak that helped Peninsula pile up 210 team points and secure second place in 3A, just behind Kelso.
“It was so exciting,” said Shipp, who attends Burley Christian School when not wrestling for Peninsula. “We’d been talking about the chance of all three of us winning in a row. When it happened, it didn’t feel real.”
Shipp’s path to that moment wasn’t straight. After starting wrestling in fifth grade, she took a break during the COVID-19 years in seventh and eighth grades at Key Peninsula Middle School. She started back up as a freshman, and when she didn’t place at the 2023 Mat Classic, she considered quitting.
“I don’t even know why I wrestled sophomore year. I wasn’t enjoying it,” Shipp said. “Then something just clicked. I started understanding how the moves fit together, and it got fun.”
That shift turned her into one of the state’s top wrestlers. More than a year removed from not wanting to wrestle anymore, she finished 42-9 as a junior, won a District 3 title, and capped the season with a state championship. She spent part of last summer competing at the prestigious freestyle nationals in Fargo, North Dakota, earning two wins in her first appearance. Now she enters her senior season focused on improvement, not comfort.
“Now I just love pushing myself past my limits and learning new moves, and my team has some of the best wrestlers in the state to learn from,” Shipp said.
While Shipp and Parker return as reigning champions, Peninsula girls wrestling faces change. The Seahawks graduated four major contributors: Sonnen, Ava Miranda, Brianna Sanderson, and Olivia Griffin — but still have enough power for another team run at the podium.
Griffin, in his 14th season guiding the Seahawks wrestling program, said the expectations haven’t changed. “Once you know what it takes to win, you don’t lower the standard,” he said. “The goal’s still the same.”
Parker begins the season chasing history. After pinning every opponent at last year’s state tournament — even while returning from an elbow injury — she can become Peninsula’s first three-time individual state champion, boys or girls, and the school’s first three-time champ in any sport. Parker has lost only three matches in the last two seasons and remains the emotional anchor of a roster that blends championship experience with hungry newcomers.
Familiar names return to fill key spots: Justus Johnson (120 lbs.), Paige Powers (125 lbs.), Georgina Johnson (100 lbs.), and Mya Robles (100 lbs.), along with rising sophomore Lily Robles (115 lbs.), who placed eighth at state as a No. 19 seed — the lowest seeded girls wrestler to place at the Mat Classic. Griffin said the team’s bond and accountability continue to separate them from most programs.
On the boys’ side, Nehemiah “Nemo” Grandorff returns after taking sixth at 144 pounds, improving from seventh the year before. Griffin hopes his example — and the girls’ dominance — can spark broader buy-in. “The boys see it and want it,” he said. “Now they just have to put in the same work.”
Peninsula qualified six boys for last year’s Mat Classic and finished 45th overall, while White River captured the 3A crown. Still, Griffin said the returning core looks tougher and more seasoned. “Some of those kids were a second or two away from placing. They’ve been in those moments. Now it’s about finishing.”
It’s a lesson the whole program can learn from Shipp herself.
“That final match always reminds me that nothing’s over until the whistle blows,” she said.
