Maroulis to semis, Woods makes bronze medal match at 2025 World Championships

ZAGREB, Croatia – It was a mixed bag of results for the five Team USA athletes in action on Tuesday morning at the 2025 Senior World Championships. Olympic champion and three-time World champion Helen Maroulis led the way for the U.S. women, qualifying for the semifinals, while Real Woods broke through the repechage and into a bronze medal match on the men’s freestyle side.

Maroulis logged less than a period’s worth of mat time in her two matches during the session. She went feet-to-back twice, pinning 2021 U20 World bronze medalist Emine Cakmak of Turkey and two-time U23 World medalist Himeka Tokuhara of Japan, in the preliminary rounds at 57 kg. Up next for Maroulis is reigning European champion Olga Khoroshavtseva of UWW.

The other three U.S. women to take the mats—Audrey Jimenez at 50 kg, Macey Kilty at 65 kg and Kylie Welker at 76 kg—suffered close losses. Of the three, Kilty and Welker still have a change at repechage going into the semifinals. Kilty and Welker were both medalists at last year’s Non-Olympic Weight World Championships held in Tirana, Albania.

Needing two wins to make it through the 65 kg men’s freestyle repechage, Woods was up to the challenge. He notched a speedy 10-0 technical fall in just over a minute against Ikromzhon Khadzhimurodov of Kyrgyzstan in the first match of the session. His round two win was tighter, yet controlled, at 7-5 over India’s two-time age-group World medalist Sujeet. Woods will face Pan American rival Peiman Biabani of Canada in the bronze medal match.

For a complete match-by-match breakdown of the morning session for Team USA in Zagreb, browse our day four match notes.

The tournament resumes at 4:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday with the women’s freestyle group two (50-57-65-76 kg) semifinals, followed by the men’s freestyle group three (65-97 kg) and women’s freestyle group one (55-59 kg) medal matches at 6 p.m. Zagreb, Croatia, is in the GMT +2 time zone, which is six hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time.

The Senior World Championships are streaming live on FloWrestling.com to the U.S. market. Brackets and updated results are available on UWW Arena.

USA Wrestling will provide regular updates on TheMat.com and its social media platforms throughout the event.