By Roxanna Scott
USA TODAY Sports

ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — Wrestlers Helen Maroulis and Kyle Snyder bent over at the waist, each reaching to touch their toes while looking out at the eight children imitating their movements.

Maroulis and Snyder are both Olympic hopefuls training for next year’s Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. Both are home for the holidays visiting family in Maryland, and both happen to be the best in the world in their sport, reigning world champions in their respective weight classes.

While many spent the last few hours of Dec. 23 in the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping, Maroulis and Snyder brought smiles and laughter to children gathered for a Casey Cares Foundation event at a local gym. Casey Cares is a non-profit organization that provides programming for families with critically ill children in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Before leading the Casey Cares kids through a series of stretches, Maroulis and Snyder shared their stories of how they got into wrestling. Snyder, at age 5, liked to roughhouse with his brothers and was taken by his dad to a wrestling club. (His older brother, Stephen, wrestled for four years at West Point and younger brother, Kevin, will attend Ohio State next year.) At age 7, Maroulis followed her brother into the sport and begged her parents to let her compete.

Maroulis, 24, joked that she and Snyder, who’s redshirting this season at Ohio State to train for the U.S. Olympic trials, wrestled for the same club growing up, “And I was a little bigger than he was,” she said of Snyder, who now wrestles at 97 kilograms (213 pounds).

Read Full Story