PARIS — Helen Maroulis spent much of the day Friday trying to dam up her emotions to keep tears from spilling into what could be the final match of her wrestling career. 

For everything she’s accomplished in the sport — winning three World titles, becoming the first American woman to seize an Olympic gold in the sport and 10 total medals on the international circuit’s biggest stage — Maroulis had never wrestled with the emotions she dealt with Friday. 

She felt the euphoria of a monumental gold in Rio. She experienced the peace of returning to the podium after an injury-filled quad leading into Tokyo. 

In Paris, she felt primed to return to the top of the Olympic podium, only to have a semifinal lead evaporate Thursday night. 

“I’ve had a lot of cries with the realistic thought this could be my last Olympics,” the 32-year-old Maryland native said. “I really thought I was going to win in the semifinals and I thought all my preparations were amazing. When that didn’t happen, I just battled with a lot emotionally. I haven’t dealt with heartbreak at the Olympics yet and it was very hard all day to keep those tears at bay and just focus on the job and really wrestle with joy. 

“I didn’t want to go out there and wrestle scared or wrestle to win, I really wanted to wrestle my best because if this is the last memory I have of myself on the mat, I wanted it to be something beautiful.”

It’s hard to imagine a more breathtaking display than the one Maroulis put on Friday night inside Champ de Mars Arena, where she dumped Canada’s Hannah Taylor to her back for a 24-second fall in the 57-kilogram bronze medal match. 

The victory launched Maroulis into another historical orbit. She’s the sixth wrestler to win three women’s freestyle Olympic medals and the first American. 

“It’s a dream,” she said. “It’s so crazy. I’m so grateful. I look back on my career and I never thought as a young girl that I could achieve this.”

Maroulis recounted the story of her early days in the sport after Friday night’s bronze medal bout. She took up the sport at the age of 7 at a time when just two states sanctioned girls high school wrestling. She talked Friday about how her parents thought wrestling was a dead-end road. 

“There wasn’t a path,” she said. “Now these parents can see there’s a path. There’s a path for these girls to take.”

There’s no way to quantify what Maroulis has meant to those trailblazing efforts, but, unquestionably, her feats have inspired the next generation of American women’s wrestlers. Related or not, the sport has seen explosive growth in the United States since her historic win in Rio over Japanese legend Saori Yoshida. 

Six states sanctioned high school girls wrestling in 2016. Now there’s upwards of 40 and it’s the fastest-growing sport nationally. 

“There’s a lot of women who came before me who made a way,” Maroulis said. “There are women who never got an Olympic dream but because they were on the mat they made it so women’s wrestling would get added to the Olympics (in 2004). To be continuing that and having the baton get passed, it’s been an honor and I’m super excited to pass that baton on.”

She’s not quite sure, though, when she’ll relinquish that baton. After Thursday’s loss, Maroulis said she was ready to leave her shoes on the mat — the symbol of retirement from the sport. She sounded less certain after winning the bronze medal bout. 

“I’ve been praying a lot and I still don’t know yet,” she said. “There’s some other things I want in life. There’s some things I need to do to take care of myself and my body. I really love this sport. I love it and it’s not that I’m holding on because of anything competitively or an accolade, it’s like I really just love what I get to do and the way I experience God through that has been really beautiful to me. But you know it’s going to come to an end at some point.”