Kennedy Blades (born September 4, 2003)[1] is an American wrestler. She qualified to represent the United States at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Biography
Blades is from Chicago, Illinois.[1] She and her younger sister, Korina, started taking Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes when she was four years old.[2] She later switched to wrestling at age seven, joining a small club in the area.[2] As there were not many girls she could wrestle against, she often trained against boys.[2] She won several championships competing against boys, including becoming the first female to win the IKWF Illinois state title, in 2016.[1][2][3][4]
Blades and her sister, also a wrestler, attended Wyoming Seminary in Pennsylvania, the first American high school to have a girls wrestling program.[2] She said that "because there weren't any women’s high school wrestling teams in the nation, we had to travel around the world to get competition" – while in high school, she competed against wrestlers from countries including Japan, Russia, Estonia, Austria and Sweden.[2] Blades won the U.S. cadet national championship in 2018, and the U16 national championship, U17 national championship, and junior national championship in 2019.[1]
