Granger’s Sarah Hildebrandt has realized her dream of winning an Olympic gold medal.
She started as a role model for a tiny but growing number of young girls in the Penn Wrestling Club. She’s now an Olympic gold medalist.
Competing today in the Paris summer games, Sarah Hildebrandt defeated Yusneylis Guzman Lopez of Cuba 3-0 to win gold in the Women’s Freestyle 50 Kilogram division.
On Tuesday Hildebrandt easily beat women from Algeria, China and Mongolia.
Her years of hard work to get to Paris met with some good fortune at the games. India’s Vinesh Phogat Tuesday pulled off a stunning upset of the division’s top-rated wrestler, Japan’s undefeated Yui Susaki. That set Hildebrandt up to face Phogat Wednesday in the gold medal match but Phogat was disqualified for weighing 100 grams too much.
This is the second olympics for Hildebrandt, a 30-year-old Penn High School graduate, but it’s her first gold medal. She won bronze in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Young girls were coming up to the railing in the arena and taking video of the match. Afterward an NBC Sports reporter asked her how it feels to be their hero.
"I see videos that I'm tagged on on social media and stuff with girls like chanting my name," Hildebrandt told NBC. "They're like, 'Go Sarah! Go Sarah!' It just adds to all of this, the gratitude, the love, the fun. This is what it's about."
