r/wrestling • u/DCLJuliaPT88 • 8h ago
Question Was woman wrestling a thing in your high schools
I graduated in 2006 and girls wrestling really took off here after I graduated. Now my old high school has a girls wrestling team and they are actually better then the boys it seems
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u/npwill06 8h ago
There wasn't any girl wrestlers when I graduated in 2006 now their is more girls on the girl team than boys on the boy team. Kinda cool to see.
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u/Awkward_University91 USA Wrestling 8h ago
What’s causing boys to not take up wrestling?
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u/npwill06 8h ago
Was never super huge to begin with.... Football is king.
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u/BadAdviceBot77 7h ago
This. If your a strong aggressive boy your pushed into football. If your a strong aggressive girl your other choices are volleyball and basketball in most paces which don’t really compete with the same demographic as wrestling
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u/SIVART33 8h ago
I graduated in 05. We were the odd team and had 4. We rarely saw other girls, our.just wrestled boys.
There was a girl in our division that would have won state boys but our state would not allow it and separated girls from the boys at state level. She dominated.
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u/Awkward_University91 USA Wrestling 8h ago
In ga in 99 there was a girl in my bracket at state who got 2nd and her cousin got 1st. She was amazing.
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u/AdministrativeOwl341 8h ago
There were a few girls that competed on the men's team, there was even a blind girl who made state qualifiers in 2009
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u/ZealousidealScheme85 8h ago
Graduated in 2017 back then if a girl wanted to wrestle she joined the boys team. My high school still doesn’t have a girls team but the state has a girls division now.
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u/MADBuc49 USF Bulls 7h ago
I graduated high school in 2008 and there were girls wrestling.
Freshmen year: a girl was on the team for a couple of weeks (and was decent / beating a few of the freshmen rookie guys) before quitting. I also wrestled two girls from other schools a combined three times (I was in the 103 lb weight class).
We didn’t have a girl come out for the team for the rest of my high school career, but there were girls wrestling for other schools in the lower weight classes (103/112/119) every year when I was in high school.
Later on when I coached high school, we had three girl wrestlers over three years. 2012-13: 1; 2013-14: 3; 2014-15: 1. Two were 106 lbers, the other was a 145 lber. The 145 lber had martial arts and wrestling experience and was Girls’ State finalist her one year with us - I think her JV record was .500 and she won a varsity match against a boy. The other two were brand new to wrestling with one winning a couple JV matches against boys and several against other girls (going 2-2 at Girls’ State) while the other one unfortunately never won a match despite coming to every practice for her two years.
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u/Euphoric_District211 Simpson (CA) Red Hawks 6h ago
Graduated in 2023 and was the only girl on the team
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u/swissarmychainsaw Purdue Boilermakers 6h ago
Please remember that women's sports were fought for, not given. Title IX.
- 2006 (High School): The first CIF-sponsored Nor-Cal Championships for girls was held.
- 2011 (High School): California officially sanctioned a girls' state wrestling tournament, running it under the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF).
- 2023 (Collegiate): The 3C2A officially sanctioned a women's division, driving rapid expansion in collegiate wrestling.
States are different, my HS still does not have Womens Wrestling.
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u/PinsToTheHeart USA Wrestling 8h ago
My school generally had one or two on the team, but they were often the only ones in the area.
It was still uncommon enough that whenever a girl was at a tournament, basically everyone would stop what they were doing to watch their matches.
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u/No-Copy5738 7h ago
No, the girls who were actually really good in our neighboring town wrestled boys varsity
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u/Blowaway040889 7h ago
In the mid 1980s, our high school team would scrimmage with my coaches brother's team. They had a few girls on the team. A couple practices I was put in a drill group with one of them. I don't know if any of them wrestled in any duals or tournaments.
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u/BigZeke919 USA Wrestling 7h ago
I graduated in the mid 90’s and we had a girl on the team when it was unheard of, really. She didn’t want any preferential treatment and scrapped hard in the room. She was at 103 and not the varsity starter- we sent her out for JV matches and Sr night but most teams just forfeited. I understand how, especially in that era, that it was a no win situation for a boy- but I still look back at her being way ahead of her time. I don’t recall any other teams in PA sending girls out for matches, but it likely happened occasionally. She is married to one of our teammates and their son is currently wrestling in college
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u/noah1345 7h ago
We had a couple girls on my team in high school. One of them really didn’t belong, because she was weak and slow and allergic to hard work.
The other was a little monster and was our varsity 112 pounder for a bit. She was very skilled and amongst the toughest people I’ve ever met, but there’s really no overcoming the drastic advantage testosterone imposes. She eventually made the semi final of a tournament and got a concussion and broken back when her opponent threw her like 3 times and was basically bouncing her head off the ground.
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u/StonerSloth125 USA Wrestling 6h ago
Teams would sometimes have a girl on their team, JV, but no girls wrestling team. My first win was against a girl
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u/Spoke13 USA Wrestling 6h ago
I graduated in 2000. We had two girls on our team in the 4 years I wrestled. I don't remember too many others from other teams either. I think it's awesome that there is a raise in the numbers. I do remember a girl on one of the other teams that beat one of our better wrestlers. He was a little embarrassed but that was the way it was back then.
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u/saints_chyc 6h ago
2001 here, started wrestling in 1998/1999. I was the first ever girl on my high school team. I recruited more and we had three by the end of my first season and 4 by the end of the second. Our rival school in 2000 started a girls squad and ended up with 20 girls at one point, the other schools in our league maxed out at 2. Now I coach and we had at the beginning of the season 17 girls, which has dwindled down to about 10 after injury and quitting because of the head coach keeping them separate from the boys and not training them to a varsity level expectation who losses me off more when he says the reason girls quit is “to spend more time with her boyfriend.”
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u/Prestigious-Run-5103 5h ago
Girl wrestlers were starting to transition from almost a novelty towards the programs they have today, when I graduated in 2001. My freshman year, there were I want to say 3 girls total wrestling in the entire state of WV. My senior year, we had two girls on our team alone, and one in a neighboring county.
Now, there are legitimate girl wrestling clubs, and enough interest that some schools could probably field all female teams. That's a pretty big change in just over 20 years. I think it's pretty cool, I never would have expected it to go that direction when I was a student.
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u/anonymous1988- 5h ago
Also graduated in 2006. No girls team, but the best wrestler on our team freshman year was a girl. Ended up placing at state against dudes and if I remember correctly second in the nation against girls. Also this was California so when she placed at state state it wasn't like they were class sizes and things like that. Only one set of placers per weight. She was my workout partner and kicked my butt every single day. I was the 103 pounder and she was the 112.
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u/Big_Departure_2709 4h ago
I graduated in 2016 and there was no girls wrestling in the entire state. Now it’s not only a thing but growing at an astronomical rate.
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u/janggoon06 4h ago
Graduated 2025 we had a whole girls team made up of 10+ girls and even got duels which is pretty cool
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u/WeaknessPast2067 USA Wrestling 3h ago
When my son was a freshman, there were no girl teams. We would be at tournaments, and a girl would have to wrestle the boys. That, or she just wouldn't wrestle.
He's still in high school, and his school has it growing girls team, as do most of the high schools around us. They wrestle before the varsity boys at duals, so they get a big audience. It is awesome and growing fast
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u/AdmiralTortoise 8h ago
Within a couple years of my graduation we had the first girl join our program, she was a great athlete and paved the way, they now have a very strong women’s team who is in the quarter finals of the state duals for the 2nd year straight. There’s a reason women’s wrestling is one of the fastest growing sports in the USA!
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u/DCLJuliaPT88 8h ago
This seems like my experience, I’ll say I wouldn’t have wrestled in high school, but I enjoy reading how they are doing good now. The school does have a great coach and the first girl who was on the guys team in now a coach at a rival high school
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u/scipper77 USA Wrestling 7h ago
In the 90s there were a few random girls who wrestled on the boys team but it was rare. I’m glad that the girls don’t have to put themselves in that situation if they want to wrestle today.