By Brayden Carlson
On January 12th, 2022, Iowa became the 34th state to sanction girls wrestling. Sanctioning the program will give the girls another option to practice in their Winter term of the high school experience. The participation rate of wrestling for girls is constantly rising, which makes it another sport for girls to get scholarships from colleges. Sanctioning girls' wrestling is also essential to recognize the success the students achieve. Until the sanctioning of girls' wrestling, students could not showcase their awards and prizes in their school’s halls.
This all started with the thought of people being curious on how participation numbers would spike if girls wrestled girls instead of guys. A major wall that had to be broken down was the fact that girls wrestled guys when it came to growing statewide participation. Spencer and Waverly-Shell Rock even drove two plus hours to show their support for girls wrestling becoming its own program. Many head coaches have shown their support by putting in the time to teach the new girls on the team and travel far, so the girls have a chance to compete.
On the national stage, girl’s wresting is positively trending among high school female sports. Although the sport has been mainly exclusive for boys, it has gained steam as a unisex sport in recent years. According to Ohio University, 112 high school girls participated in wrestling in 1990. However, the numbers grew by 10% annually and by the 2016-2017 school year, 14,587 female high schoolers were active in the sport (The rise of girls' wrestling). It has also been reported that more than 15 states have officially sanctioned girls’ championships, and 61 colleges offer women’s wrestling programs. In the perspectives of national wresting organizations, Gary Abbott, the USA Wrestling’s director of communications and writes on the National Wrestling Hall of Fame blog, that girls “only had the opportunity to participate on the boys wrestling team at their high school.” He also admired the girls for going by wrestling by saying that “it took a great deal of courage to wrestle, not only because of the physical disadvantage but also because it was not yet accepted by society for girls to train and compete against boys in a combat sport like wrestling” (The rise of girls' wrestling) After years of being regarded as a male sport, wrestling is slowly making room to be inclusive regardless of gender. However, girls wanting to participate in wrestling face stereotypical obstacles that discourage them from going out for the sport.
Girl wrestling is a growing sport and outpacing the popularity of boys wrestling. In New Hampshire, the first-ever Girls State Championship for wrestling will be held in February of this year, according to the Concord Monitor. This comes after the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association (NHIAA) announced last November as the male-dominated sport has struggled to keep pace with other sports (Rynston-Lobel). The sport has also been struggling on the Olympic scale as it was voted out in the 2020 Olympics only for it to be included in the 2024 Olympics. This indicates that the sport is doing something risky on the national and even international levels. On the boys’ side, it has been in decline since the 2010-11 school year as a reported 275,000 boys (about half the population of Wyoming) were actively participating in high school wrestling. Since then, it has shrunk to around 230,000 in the 2021-22 school year. In contrast, girls' wrestling has skyrocketed from just over 7,000 girls in the 2010-11 years to 32,000 in the 2021-22 years (Rynston-Lobel). This explosion in girls’ wrestling has saved the sport from becoming endangered, and the NHIAA’s move to hold the girls’-specific championship validates that the sport may be moving in a different direction, and it involves in becoming a unisex sport.
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