Fowlerville's Maggie Buurma: From tap dancer to state wrestling champ

FOWLERVILLE — Who knew tap dancing would be the vehicle to launch a state championship wrestling career?

Let’s explain.

Long before she was standing atop podiums at the state finals at Ford Field, Fowlerville junior Maggie Buurma was a dancer.

“From the time I was in diapers,” she said.

Buurma didn’t even consider becoming a wrestler until the subject was broached by her older brother, Jimmy, when she was in second or third grade.

She would give the sport a try, on one condition.

“I made a deal with my brother, if he tap danced, I would do wrestling,” she said. “It turns out we both stuck with wrestling and neither of us continued to tap dance. I fell in love with the environment, the people, the coaches. I’ve had pretty much the same coaches since I was really young.”

Jimmy Buurma, who was 37-8 and a regional qualifier as a senior two years ago, was off the hook after one year in tap.

Maggie gave up dance in junior high school after taking lessons for about 12 years to focus on a wrestling career in which she’s trending to become a four-time state champion.

Buurma has won two state championships and pinned the second-ranked girl in her weight class to win the regional last Sunday in Howell. She will compete for a third state title March 1 and 2 at Ford Field in Detroit.

Buurma hasn’t lost to a girl from Michigan in two years. She is 61-3 against girls during her Fowlerville career.

For all the success she’s achieved, Buurma still gets nervous before matches. It’s not always the kind of healthy nervousness that can keep athletes from becoming complacent.

At regionals, she struggled to win a 4-2 decision in the semifinals against Elliana Hillard of DeWitt. She spent the time between that match and the final trying to get her mind right.

“She wrestled really well,” said Buurma, the Livingston Daily Athlete of the Week. “I had a little bit of an off day. My nerves were hitting a little bit. After the match, I went into a hallway just kind of sitting there. One of my guy teammates and me, we just sat there and talked through the nerves. He helped me get out of my funk before the final match.”

One of the things Buurma loves about wrestling for Fowlerville is the respect she and her female teammates and shown by the boys on the team. The Gladiators have 16 girls on their roster and have five of the seven Livingston County girls who have qualified for the state finals.

Girls may feel intimidated or even unwelcome in some wrestling rooms, but that isn’t Buurma’s experience at Fowlerville.

“We have a really open environment in our room,” she said. “The guys who have been wrestling at Fowlerville, they’ve had two or three girls on their team since they were really little. They’ve always been super welcoming. They’ll go around like, ‘Hey, you should wrestle; you’d be really good at it.’

“It’s kind of hard to get started as a female wrestler, just because there are a lot of guys. Are they going to accept me? Are the coaches going to accept me? In Fowlerville, we have a super open room. We’ve got great coaches and great kids who are accepting of everyone. Last year, we didn’t have as many girls as this year; we had quite a few still. After girls saw that, they were like, ‘Hey, this is pretty cool. I could do that.’ It started opening up people’s minds to give it a try.”

Given encouragement and a sounding board from one of her male teammates, Buurma took the mat for the finals and pinned previously unbeaten Paisley Denault of Clarkston in 1 minute, 47 seconds.

“I train a little bit with the girl I wrestled in the finals,” Buurma said. “We’re pretty good friends, so it was a fun match to have. We were definitely glad we had that match so I could see her wrestle before states.”

Buurma said it’s not unusual for many of the top female wrestlers in Michigan to also be great friends off the mat. Many of them train together at Michigan Revolution Training Center in Highland, a facility that’s become known for the quality of its female wrestling program.

“We train quite a bit together and wrestle each other quite a bit,” she said. “We usually connect with each other and get to talking and becoming friends. That’s kind of what I like about girls wrestling is we can go on the mat, wrestle our hearts out, wrestle our hardest and get off the mat and be able to be friends and talk and laugh.”

Buurma’s only loss to a girl since her freshman year was to Ciara Riner of Spring Valley (Ohio) in the Findlay Invitational on Dec. 22. Riner is ranked 13th in the nation at 135 pounds by Track Wrestling, while Buurma is ranked 17th.

“Sometimes it’s almost better to have a loss on your record, because with that loss, you kind of remember that feeling,” Buurma said. “Any time I have a bad practice or I’m not really motivated to go to practice, I think about what I could have done to win that match. She’s working just as hard as me. I’ve got to work harder so I can win that match next time. I can use that in my next matches and the state meet to better myself. I don’t want to feel that way again like I felt after that loss.”

Contact Bill Khan at wkhan@gannett.com. Follow him on X @BillKhan

This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Fowlerville's Maggie Buurma: From tap dancer to state wrestling champ