Girls high school wrestling participation surges in Wisconsin as opportunities grow

BOSCOBEL, Wis. — The sport of girls wrestling in Wisconsin has seen a rapid increase in the number of students participating across the state.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, girls had to wrestle boys to take part in conference or state tournaments, as there wasn’t a standalone girls event for them to compete in. As a result, only a few hundred girls took up wrestling as a varsity sport. According to the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, or WIAA, 227 girls wrestled in 2017-18.

Coaches and administrators saw an opportunity for growth in the sport, however, as other states began sanctioning girls wrestling.

Wisconsin, which has been slower to adopt changes to high school sports than other states — multiple measures to add a shot clock to basketball, or name, image, and likeness rules, as two recent examples, have been voted down despite neighboring states adopting those policies — also lagged behind other states in adding girls wrestling as a sport. Girls wrestling was sanctioned in 2021-22, one year after the COVID-19 pandemic in which 245 girls took part in wrestling.

In its first year as a sanctioned high school sport, girls wrestling grew in participation to 452 wrestlers — a nearly 85% growth in numbers.

That trend continued in 2022-23, with 749 girls high school wrestlers in the sport — a nearly 66% jump. Last year, 1,235 girls wrestled in Wisconsin, another 65% bump in numbers.

Mel Dow, the WIAA’s Associate Director, who also was one of the leaders in getting the sport sanctioned in Wisconsin as an athletic director at Stoughton prior to joining the WIAA’s executive staff, said that this year, 1,868 girls are taking part in wrestling. That’s a 51% increase over last year over six times the number of girls in the sport since the years prior to the sport receiving its own championship.

“The sport is going to continue to grow as more opportunities are provided,” Dow said.

Season	Wrestlers
2017-18	227
2018-19	289
2019-20	368
2020-21¹	245
2021-22²	452
2022-23	749
2023-24	1,235
2024-25	1,868

That growth is clear in the state tournament brackets for girls wrestling, which only two years ago might have only seen one girl for an entire weight class in some brackets. Now, in large and small schools alike, brackets and tournaments are filling up, especially with the rule this year separating boys and girls wrestlers from competing against one another.

“I know that in the past with girls I’ve coached, that they’ve been kind of nervous to get on the mat, just because it was a sport where guys and girls were together,” Luke Blair, a wrestling coach at Boscobel/Wauzeka-Steuben who coaches the girls in the program, said. “Now that it’s separate, I think it’s really helping a lot of the girls see the sport as more of a fun sport.”

The co-op program has a dozen girls competing this year, a huge increase from having only a handful of wrestlers, boys and girls combined, a couple of years ago.

“I feel like girls are more comfortable with coming out,” Carleen Chappell, a senior wrestler for Boscobel/Wauzeka-Steuben, said about the change in the rules about girls no longer having to compete with boys at tournaments. “I like competing against other girls who have the same interests.”

Payten Sander, a freshman, agreed that the rule change splitting boys and girls up is a big factor in the sport’s growth.

“More girls have come out because it’s only girls can wrestle girls, so it’s less of a chance of them getting hurt,” Sander said.

Dow confirmed that the WIAA is hearing the same things statewide, that the opportunity for girls to compete in their own sport has led to the spike in participation.

Blair, who coached boys wrestling for four years at Fennimore prior to this season, said that girls wrestling is a completely different sport than boys.

“Girls have strength in different areas of their body,” Blair said. “I’ve had to completely change the style of wrestling that I coach so it makes things better for them and makes them a little more successful.”

The girls have also helped influence Blair’s coaching philosophy.

“They just love having fun,” Blair said. “I’ve always taken wrestling as something super-serious, and these girls have helped me lighten up and bring a little more fun to the sport.”

Beyond Wisconsin, the NCAA voted recently to sanction girls wrestling as its 91st championship sport starting with the 2026-27 season. That coincides with Wisconsin’s first year in which the state will crown a team state champion in girls wrestling based on a season-ending dual meet. For this season and next season, the girls state team champion will be determined by points accumulated by individual wrestlers in the state tournament.

Boscobel/Wauzeka-Steuben’s wrestlers will take part in the WIAA Individual State Tournament, with regionals taking place this Saturday at Mineral Point for both boys and girls.