Caledonia High School Athletics

The last time she had her arm raised in the Fighting Scots’ championship tartan singlet, Caledonia’s Maddie Hayden held three fingers in the air to celebrate her third consecutive MHSAA Individual State Championship. There won’t be a fourth, but there will be plenty of wrestling ahead for the Caledonia senior. Hayden signed her National Letter of Intent Nov. 12 to join the Northern Michigan University (NMU) Women’s Wrestling program next season. She’s working to be at full strength by the time she’s competing in the Wildcats’ green and gold. Hayden had surgery to repair the labrum in her left shoulder after getting in a few last big bouts in September, and she had plans for similar repairs to her right shoulder slated for early December. “Both of them happened kind of a while ago. I tore my right one in De­cember (2024) and then my left one in April (2025), but they were really bothering me,” Maddie said, “so, I knew that I needed to get them done especially before college. But, I really wanted to go to Fargo this summer and compete in Greece and stuff during the summer.” Caledonia wrestler Maddie Hayden is interviewed on the turf at Ford Field in Detroit following her third MHSAA Individual Finals Championship at the end of her junior season in March, 2025. File photo by Brett Bremer Caledonia wrestler Maddie Hayden is interviewed on the turf at Ford Field in Detroit following her third MHSAA Individual Finals Championship at the end of her junior season in March, 2025. File photo by Brett Bremer Last spring it was either hurry to the operating table to get the shoulders fixed for a senior high school season or tough it out through Nationals in Fargo and an opportunity to wrestle overseas. She missed some opportunities to compete on a bigger stage in the summer of 2024 due to a concussion, and chose to hold off on surgeries. Hayden won the silver medal in the 75 kg weight class at the 2025 U17 Beach World Championships in Katerini, Greece, in September. “I didn’t know that was a thing until recently,” Hayden said of beach wres­tling. “It was really cool. I went to Italy earlier this summer too. That was kind of for a camp and a small tournament, and then Greece and Austria. Going overseas, especially this summer, was really cool to see all the other wrestlers around the world.” Hayden placed seventh in the Junior Girls 170-pound weight class in July at the 2025 U.S. Marine Corps Junior Nationals in Fargo, ND. She wrestled into the championship quarterfinals – not as successful as her previous runner-up finish in Fargo, but still a result to be pleased with especially while battling through injuries. First-year NMU Women’s Wrestling Head Coach Adam Wilson was very persistent in pursuing Hayden to be a part of his program, which is opening its fifth season in Marquette this winter. Wilson was previously the director of wrestling and head women’s coach at Albion College and the head assistant wrestling coach at Olivet University. He is also a member of the Michigan USA Wrestling Executive Board, and oversees the state’s top youth national teams. So, he was very familiar with Hayden. “He was outstanding compared to all the other coaches that were trying to recruit me, I feel like,” Hayden said. “He put a lot of extra effort in trying to get me on the team. Northern is about seven hours north, and he drove all the way down here to do a home visit. He gave me a really, really good offer. He checked in a lot. He gave me a lot of op­portunities to come to Marquette a few times. He was very thorough and pas­sionate about getting me on the team.” “I am actually really excited,” Hayden added of the move to the upper peninsu­la. “I really like the area. I am definitely an outdoorsy type of person. I would rather go do stuff outside in more rural areas than in cities and stuff. I am really excited for the overall area of Marquette, but also Northern Michigan itself. The campus has a really good vibe to it and the team has a really good atmosphere. I am pretty confident I’ll be pretty set in wrestling and also living there in just my daily life.” She has plans to pursue a degree in nursing, and currently has her sights set on becoming a CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist). “I think that [Wilson] identified a few of the Team Michigan girls who he really thought would be great assets in help­ing to build the team,” said Maddie’s mother, Kelly Hayden. “He is very invested in getting North­ern’s team name out there better and to really build a great program,” she added. “The whole school is really investing a lot of money and a lot of effort into making their program a top five or top ten program. He has a great vision and he wanted Maddie to be a part of it, and she is going to bring a lot to the team. Not just being a good wrestler, but he is look­ing for girls with the whole package.” The NMU women are currently ranked tenth in the country in the Na­tional Wrestling Coaches Association coaches poll with four women ranked among the top ten individually at their weight class in the NCAA. NMU has quite a wrestling heritage. NMU is also home to the NMU-Nation­al Training Site for Olympic training. “A couple of our women’s Olympic medalists stayed here when they were in high school and they trained,” Mad­die said, “like Helen Maroulis. She has won Olympic Gold (2016) and Bronze (2020 and 2024). There isAdeline Gray. She won Olympic Silver (2020). That is an Olympic training center site for wrestling, powerlifting and boxing.” Maroulis was the first U.S. woman to win Olympic Gold in freestyle wrestling. The NMU men are a bit different from wrestlers across the country. They com­pete in Greco-Roman wrestling rather than the traditional folkstyle competed across the NCAA. The NMU women compete in freestyle wrestling. The folkstyle wrestling that is contested in MHSAA events is not Hayden’s favor­ite style. She much prefers freestyle competition. “The United States is actually the only country that does folkstyle. It is kind of like a wrestling version of American football. We just do it, for some reason,” Hayden said. “I don’t really know. Freestyle and Greco-Roman are where you’re going to see all the big throws. In folkstyle, we can’t slam each other. We can’t throw each other over our heads and stuff. It is rewarded in freestyle. You actually get more points for throwing each other on each other’s backs and over our heads and stuff. Suplexes, you’ll see that in freestyle a lot. “We get push-out points. So, if one of the wrestlers pushes the other out of that big circle, you get a point for that. There is not as much top and bottom wrestling in freestyle that you see in folkstyle.” There are a lot of other small details that are different, but Hayden said the biggest difference is how much fun she can have performing the throws in freestyle. Fowlerville senior Margaret Buurma became the first girl to win four MHSAA Individual Finals championships last March at Ford Field in Detroit. Maddie won’t get the chance to match that, but she is still a part of the Caledonia High School wrestling program this winter and she was chosen as a team captain. She was on the sideline snapping photos during the Fighting Scots’ first quad of the season with Grand Ledge and Thornapple Kellogg earlier this month, and working with her teammates as part of the clean-up crew after the spotlight turned off and the gym lights came back on. “It breaks my heart, but I completely understand and support what she is do­ing,” Caledonia varsity wrestling coach Shawn Veitch said in the lead-up to the season. “Honestly, what more does she have to prove? She is already a three-time state champ … When is the best time for her to have the surgery? It’s now, then in the spring she can get back to that freestyle and go out to Fargo. I know she really wants to be a Fargo All-out there again, and that will take her right into that college season. “Selfishly, it hurts me,” he added with a little bit of a chuckle. “Selfishly, it hurts our program. But it’s never about me. It’s about the kids. She is making the right choice for Maddie, and I am so proud of that girl and I just wish her nothing but the best.” Maddie said she is having a hard time not being able to go out and lead by example on the mat for the Scots, but her Caledonia teammates can definitely take a cue from her efforts in the weight room. She got her left arm out of its sling in mid-November and got to do her first upper body lifting in early December. Prior to that, she started to get a little bored just doing free weights with her right arm and some lower body work – which she started about a week after her first surgery in the fall. “Even just being able to get back in the gym is the only thing that is keeping me sane right now,” Maddie said the week before her second surgery. “I am lifting as much as possible and doing a ton of physical therapy, and just cardio here and there. I don’t like cardio, so don’t do it as much as I prob­ably should be right now. My training is definitely going to be more intense again after this next surgery. With my first surgery I was just kind of training and eating to get to my next surgery, but with this (second) one I’m going to be training and doing physical therapy to be able to get back on the mat and get that going. It is definitely going to pick up after this surgery.”