Activities
girls' high school wrestlers Aubre Krazer pins her opponent
Easton Area High School wrestler Aubre Krazer (top) competes in a semifinal match during the Southeast
Regional wrestling tournament on February 25, 2024, in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. Girls’ wrestling has
become the fastest-growing high school sport in the country. Photo: Marc Levy/AP
By Associated Press, adapted by Newsela staff
WORDS945
PUBLISHED4/21/2024
Jody Mikhail was a sophomore at Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley High School when a poster for a
new girls’ wrestling club caught her eye. So Mikhail, a senior now, decided to try the sport.
“I fell in love with it the first time,” she said. Unlike previous generations, she’s hardly alone.
Girls’ wrestling has become the fastest-growing high school sport in the country. It’s been approved by a
number of states and supported by a movement of medal-winning female wrestlers, parents and the
male-dominated ranks of coaches and administrators who saw it as a necessity and a matter of equality.
two members of a girls HS wrestling team practice
Senior Jody Mikhail (front right) wrestles teammate Eliana White-Vega at a Cumberland Valley High
School team practice in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. White-Vega, also a senior, won a silver medal at
the 2023 U17 Pan-American Championships. Photo: Marc Levy/AP
In the past, girls wrestled on boys teams and against boys. Now, they are increasingly wrestling on girls
teams and against girls. Now that they are wrestling in sanctioned and official tournaments against girls,
their names are going onto plaques on their high schools’ walls and into state record books.
This year, Kentucky, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania held their first girls’ wrestling championships, while
Louisiana became the 45th state to officially recognize the sport. At the college level, women’s wrestling
is on track to become a championship-level sport in 2026, the National Collegiate Athletics Association
(NCAA) said.
A Rapidly Growing Sport
In Pennsylvania, the number of girl wrestlers in high schools nearly doubled this year as the state
rocketed to more than 180 high school teams. In 2020, Pennsylvania didn’t have a single girls’ wrestling
team.
Hundreds of girls competed in Pennsylvania’s first official state tournament, including Mikhail. In the
past, girls often had no choice but to wrestle boys, and there were very few girls wrestling in
tournaments every year.
“There were never tournaments like this,” said Savannah Witt, a state champion wrestler from
Pennsylvania’s Palisades High School who has wrestled for 10 years. “It’s awesome to see. I’ve been
used to running into the same, like, three faces at tournaments. Now you come here, I’m like, ‘I don’t
know half these girls.’”
In the United States, there are four times as many girls’ wrestling teams today as there were a decade
ago. The National Federation of State High School Associations reports that there are now over 50,000
high school girl wrestlers.
Last year alone, that number rose nearly 60 percent, the biggest increase for the sport in decades.
Another leap will likely vault girls’ wrestling past field hockey.
