La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

To be the best, you need to face the best.

That’s something La Conner High School senior wrestler Delaney Cobbs understands after having gone to the mat four times this winter with one of the elite grapplers in state history.

Cobbs and Marysville-Pilchuck standout Alivia White, the reigning state champion, were paired again on Saturday in the championship round of the girls’ 190-pound division at Mat Classic XXXIII in Tacoma.

White, a junior, completed an undefeated 35-0 season by defeating Cobbs, who had cruised through her side of the state bracket, in one of the more highly anticipated matches at the Tacoma Dome.

“She’ll always be a good match for me,” White, already the odds-on favorite to win a third state championship next year, said of Cobbs in a Saturday night interview with the Everett Herald.

“Alivia brought it all year,” Cobbs’ mom, Mandy Buck, a Swinomish Indian Tribal Community paraeducator at La Conner Schools, said afterward.

It was a pretty good year for Cobbs, too. She finished the campaign at 24-4, her only losses coming to White.

“I think I wrestled really well,” Cobbs told the Weekly News. “I knew going into it that I would have to wrestle really hard to make to the finals, where I would wrestle Alivia.”

Cobbs and her La Conner classmate, Kaliana Bill, qualified for the Mat Classic while wrestling on a co-op basis with 2A Burlington-Edison. Bill wrestled hard in the 155-pound class at Tacoma but was eliminated after two matches. The duo helped the B-EHS girls place 15th as a team in their half of the state tourney, which drew wrestlers from more than 100 schools.

The two-day experience is one the La Conner wrestlers will always remember, starting with the send-off celebration they received on campus prior to departing for Tacoma.

“I think my highlight would be wrestling my last match against Alivia,” said Cobbs, also a standout soccer player, track athlete and student representative on the La Conner school board.

“We have been wrestling against each other since we were 10 (years-old),” Cobbs said, “and have been in finals at tournaments countless times. So, having my last match be against her was great even if I did lose.”

Dominating her opening match with a win by pin and securing a spot on the medal podium were memorable moments for Cobbs.

“Winning my semifinal match and realizing I was in the finals,” she said, “was amazing and a feeling that I’ll never forget.”