Girls’ and women’s wrestling on the rise

Girls’ and women’s wrestling on the rise

Posted on March 11th, 2023 by Scott Warnock

Last weekend I spent a day in a filled Phillipsburg High School gym for the N.J. State Girls’ Wrestling Championships with our freshman wrestler Samantha Domask. Sammy came out of nowhere this year, shocking the world in this year’s early season Queen of the East Tournament when she emerged from the 15th seed to reach the finals. She ended up placing 8th in the state last weekend.

She has a bright future ahead.

So does the sport of girls’/women’s wrestling: Numbers are up in both high school and college programs, and more and more states are sanctioning state championships.

I’m not much of a prognosticator (or I’d be a lot richer), but I remember all the way back around my college wrestling days in the late 80s/early 90s when Title IX rules were influencing universities to shutter men’s wrestling teams. I thought, “Why don’t colleges just start women’s programs?” For those coaches opposed to mixing genders in competition or even practices, completely separate activities could be run at the same time in the same facility.

The N.J. Girls’ States reflected the growing pains of the sport. In N.J. States, wrestlers compete for places one through eight. The girls in Phillipsburg wrestled for every medal except first and second. The final match was moved to Atlantic City a week later so the girls could wrestle before the boys’ finalists in front of the big AC crowd. The concept was good, but it split the championship girls’ matches from the other place winners, breaking up the tournament’s continuity.

Watching these hard-nosed competitors in Phillipsburg, I got amped about the girls’ path in this great sport. I also realized a little part of that is because of my growing frustration with boys’ wrestling in New Jersey. And I’m not the only one. As this nj.com article describes, team wrestling for boys “is in trouble.” Driven heavily by private schools that have no boundaries in populating their rosters, talent has polarized to fewer and fewer teams. The nj.com piece analyzes considerable chunks of match data to show the lopsided competitive direction the sport has been moving in.

(Help may be on the way, as during the course of drafting this post a proposed solution appeared in nj.com: the state will create private school districts that will funnel into one private school region before states. This is a long overdue move–but that’s a discussion for another time.)

Recruiting does not equal coaching. Right now, girls’ wrestling seems still at the stage at which coaches work hard with athletes in their own schools, in many cases building practices and competitive schedules for a few bold girls who sign up for wrestling in their schools.

Another thing I was heartened by in Phillipsburg was the number of boys who showed up, some traveling far, to support their teammates. This was after many of them had battled it out in the regions themselves all weekend, emphasizing the team nature of the sport.

N.J. Girls’ States was a great day of tough athletes gutting it out for medals. And, yeah, as a coach I had a difficult time the next week watching the 235-lb. state championship final streamed from AC, as I realized what could have been for Sammy. Her only losses to girls this year were to 2nd, 3rd, and 7th in N.J.

She’ll re-focus this spring and summer, hit the weight room, and wrestle those off-season tournaments. She’ll further commit.

It’s what wrestling has always been all about.

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.