For years, wrestling has been a men’s sport. A masculine art. All up until a few girls decided, “Why can’t I try?” Since then, interest has been growing in girls’ wrestling.

Growing enough that now, instead of going up against the guys like they have for years, high school girls across Indiana are receiving their own teams. Girls’ wrestling has been labeled as an emerging sport for several years now, an emerging sport being defined by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (or NCAA) as “a women’s sport recognized by the NCAA that is intended to help schools provide more athletics opportunities for women and more sport-sponsorship options for institutions, while helping that sport achieve NCAA championship status.”

This year, the Indiana High School Athletic Association (or IHSAA) has approved girls’ wrestling as its own individual sport for high schools in Indiana. With the possibility of enough interest from female students, Bloomington High School North has decided to
begin their own team. Up until now, girls were required to compete with the boys, only able to compete when there was a boy or—occasionally—a girl who happened to be in their weight class. Alix Burns, one of the two girls on last year’s wrestling team who plans to continue wrestling this year, said, “We did not get much variation of practice partners, but when we did, it was always nice to wrestle some guys.”

Finding people to wrestle in their own weight class wasn’t the only struggle female wrestlers had to face while playing their sport.
“The guys still make comments about having to wrestle girls, and some of them still think it’s funny on other teams,” said Mr. Roy Bruce, North’s head coach for both the boys’ and girls’ wrestling teams. “And then there are some teams, still, that won’t
wrestle a girl. It was really bad about ten years ago, where teams would forfeit against girls because they didn’t believe in guys wrestling girls.”

Now, with their own wrestling division, girls have a chance to wrestle without these challenges. Currently in their preseason, the girls’ team is beginning to grow. “We’re about sixteen right now,” said Bruce, “which is really above where I thought we would be this time. My goal was to get ten in the room and work, so, hopefully all sixteen will show up and stick it out, and I have girls coming up every day asking about it and just wanting to know more information.”

As part of training, the boys and girls are practicing together, preparing the girls to begin their season in late October, less than a month before the boys begin their season. They practice in what they call “the dungeon downstairs,” their limited space consisting of the mat room and weight room. Though they often have separate practices, they come together on Thursdays to not only give the newer girls on the team an idea of how to practice and wrestle well, but also to build a bond between the two teams. While some of the girls are uncomfortable with a new sport they’ve never done before, those who have more experience have been eager to help one another, building both their skills and their team spirit.
“Obviously they’re going to be two individual teams,” Bruce explained. “And we want it to be that each one has their own identity. But we want that identity to feed into one family concept.”

And yet, building and strengthening the team isn’t the only part of the equation they have to figure out. With a new team comes new logistics and finances. “When you’re adding something, it’s going to add more work, more nights, more set-up, more space,” said Mr. Andy Hodson, North’s Athletic Director. “We have limited space—locker room space, practice space, event space. When you add something else, something
else is taken away.”

This new team will likely demand a larger coaching staff, more space, more time, more buses, and more money to commute to meets. Though several of their meets coincide with the boys, more numbers mean more resources. Limited space may also hurt the team. If numbers on the girls’ team become high enough, their needs may push coaches to separate boy and girl practice times to occasionally be late at night or early in the morning. On top of that, the teams try to invite middle schools in for wrestling clubs. Later practice times could affect those groups, as well.

The demand for space could also contend with other athletic needs. “Maybe the gyms would be booked with a wrestling meet that it wasn’t before, so then it may have to cancel out softball open gyms or baseball open gyms or youth things that we’ve had in here,” said Hodson.

Another challenge for the team will be building a fanbase. “You don’t want to perform in front of an empty gym,” said Bruce. “You don’t want to perform just in front of your parents. You want other people in the school to come. You want it to be loud.”

Despite this apparent need to find fans, those connected with the team don’t seem to be concerned. “There are a lot of parents, family, and friends that go to all of your meets,” said Burns, describing the general crowd wrestling gathers. “I don’t think it will be very hard to have a fanbase.”

And yet, with girls’ wrestling being a newer sport, smaller schools in and around Bloomington may not have teams for the girls to compete against, potentially forcing them—and fans—to travel farther to find opponents. “It depends a little bit on how many we have come out,” said Hodson. “You know, if we have five girls out on the wrestling team, then that would be traveling an hour to wrestle what could be five minutes total.”

This could potentially threaten to scare away fans that may have previously been willing to travel for an away game. The current hope is for the boys’ fans to support the girls’ teams as well. “They’ll have fans cheering for them there, too, until they can build their own fanbase and then will eventually branch off,” Bruce said.

Despite all of the challenges, those connected with the sport are still optimistic for what this season will bring. The athletes are getting along, the girls’ have their own opportunities, and the team is growing faster than anticipated. “I want the girls’ interest to grow,” Bruce said. “I want to have bigger numbers next year. . . . I don’t have expectations of state champions or stuff like that this year. I want the girls to enjoy the sport enough that it becomes a lifestyle to them. That they wrestle in the off-season, and then our numbers continue to grow next year.”

With these hopes and goals in mind, all this new team is looking for now is support and open minds. “For girls who are interested or thinking about it or kicking around—give it a shot,” Hodson, among others, encouraged.

“It’s kind of like you were born to be, like, best friends,” Burns reflected. “Like, you meet each other, and you immediately click.”

As this team continues to grow, everyone has a chance to watch history unfold with it.