IHSAA Sanctioned Girls Wrestling

[purdue02]

After listening to Robert Faulkins on the WZBD Show I had a few questions.

 

1. He mentioned he is waiting for the Coaches Association in the Spring to submit a wrestling proposal to consider it an emerging sport. I thought this had been submitted previously?

 

2. He mentioned he is looking for 120+ schools with 5+ wrestlers on the team.  How likely/how soon are we to get to that point for girls wrestling in the state?

 

3. He mentioned if there is an IHSAA girls and boys season that current rules state that girls would not be allowed to compete in the boys season.  Is it such that they could not compete or they would have to pick one and not compete in both?

 

4. What are the pros to sanctioning girls wrestling as an IHSAA sport?  Team state this past weekend ran amazing and the structure is much better than it was as an IHSAA entity.  Is it a necessity for girls wrestling to be IHSAA sanctioned in order to reach its fullest potential?

[MattM]

17 minutes ago, purdue02 said:

3. He mentioned if there is an IHSAA girls and boys season that current rules state that girls would not be allowed to compete in the boys season.  Is it such that they could not compete or they would have to pick one and not compete in both?

Did he say separation for the entire season or just for the state tournament series? If it’s the entire season that could be difficult for many schools considering weight classes already would limit the amount of match opportunities available to get competition.  Many of the current girls at least get some mat time in JV matches throughout the boys season. 

[Y2CJ41]

45 minutes ago, purdue02 said:

2. He mentioned he is looking for 120+ schools with 5+ wrestlers on the team.  How likely/how soon are we to get to that point for girls wrestling in the state?

This year we had 113 teams represented with an average of 3 wrestlers per team. Only 26 though entered 5+ athletes. 

[MattM]

According to this 32 states currently sanction some type of girls state event, though several of them were just added in the past few years.  

https://www.nwcaonline.com/growing-wrestling/growing-womens-wrestling/states-continuing-to-sanction-girls-wrestling-on-the-rise/

 

Has anyone reached out to some of the more productive states that sanction a girls state (California, Hawaii, Texas, Washington, and Oregon come to mind) to see what their current season set up is like or at least what it was for a few years until they grew the girls numbers to a much more sustainable level.  I’d think having evidence from other success stories would help, although we never know what all it will take to convince the of anything.  

Edited January 10, 2022 by MattM

[Matt Time]

For the past three years, I've had one girl on the team. This year, I had eight in the practice room and six who competed in nearly all the girls tournaments. Two will make it through to the state finals next weekend. Tonight, we had four more girls show up who were simply "curious" and I talked to them about joining next year. As comfortable as they are with me and the other male coaches, our school's ability to get a female adult to join us will be the next step to helping the next batch overcome their hesitancy. What does that have to do with sanctioning? It would give my school the confidence to actually invest in the sport, commit to extra $$ to help cover getting a female adult/teacher involved and various other things like women's singlets, some dedicated space and other basic necessities.

 

Even if IHSAA doesn't choose to sanction, there are a few things that we can do next year as a coaching association and ISWA to help continue building this sport. Getting the list of invitations built early and communicated widely. We need a single place to go to get information and commitment to pushing communications about the opportunities for girls at the schools and ADs.  At the tournament level, tightening up the seeding will help too. We have the data from all of the placements and head-to-heads, but never used it. This made for some bad mismatches at a few of the tournaments this year.

 

Just need get more aggressive with our promotion, communication and getting things organized so schools and teams can plan. I really don't see how with some level of semi-professional organization, communication and promotion that we can get past the 120+ schools with 5 or more wrestlers threshold.  Heck, if the boys keep shrinking at the current rate, they'll fall below that threshold before the end of the decade.

 

Regardless of any minor gripes, we took a big step forward with our girls this year with zero help from IHSAA. If IHSAA doesn't want to come along for the ride, well, forget 'em. I think there's a big enough community here interested in building out this sport and willing to invest behind it. 

[purdue02]

1 hour ago, MattM said:

Did he say separation for the entire season or just for the state tournament series? If it’s the entire season that could be difficult for many schools considering weight classes already would limit the amount of match opportunities available to get competition.  Many of the current girls at least get some mat time in JV matches throughout the boys season. 

My understanding was current rules state they would be separated the whole season.  For instance, girls cannot play on the boys soccer team during the regular season and including the postseason.

[dstruck]

IHSWCA is in constant talks with IHSAA and Robert Faulkens.  A proposal will be brought to them roughly March 1 from our directors.  

 

ISWA Directors, and IHSGWA is doing an awesome job growing this!!!

[casualwrestlingfan]

15 hours ago, Matt Time said:

For the past three years, I've had one girl on the team. This year, I had eight in the practice room and six who competed in nearly all the girls tournaments. Two will make it through to the state finals next weekend. Tonight, we had four more girls show up who were simply "curious" and I talked to them about joining next year. As comfortable as they are with me and the other male coaches, our school's ability to get a female adult to join us will be the next step to helping the next batch overcome their hesitancy. What does that have to do with sanctioning? It would give my school the confidence to actually invest in the sport, commit to extra $$ to help cover getting a female adult/teacher involved and various other things like women's singlets, some dedicated space and other basic necessities.

 

Even if IHSAA doesn't choose to sanction, there are a few things that we can do next year as a coaching association and ISWA to help continue building this sport. Getting the list of invitations built early and communicated widely. We need a single place to go to get information and commitment to pushing communications about the opportunities for girls at the schools and ADs.  At the tournament level, tightening up the seeding will help too. We have the data from all of the placements and head-to-heads, but never used it. This made for some bad mismatches at a few of the tournaments this year.

 

Just need get more aggressive with our promotion, communication and getting things organized so schools and teams can plan. I really don't see how with some level of semi-professional organization, communication and promotion that we can get past the 120+ schools with 5 or more wrestlers threshold.  Heck, if the boys keep shrinking at the current rate, they'll fall below that threshold before the end of the decade.

 

Regardless of any minor gripes, we took a big step forward with our girls this year with zero help from IHSAA. If IHSAA doesn't want to come along for the ride, well, forget 'em. I think there's a big enough community here interested in building out this sport and willing to invest behind it. 

Would it be better if the entire sport was no longer under the IHSAA & just purely under the IHSWCA?

[bomber_bob]

40 minutes ago, casualwrestlingfan said:

Would it be better if the entire sport was no longer under the IHSAA & just purely under the IHSWCA?

Absolutely not....many schools would not sponsor a wrestling team if this were the case. 

[XCard]

19 minutes ago, bomber_bob said:

Absolutely not....many schools would not sponsor a wrestling team if this were the case. 

Which may be the case currently for some schools and a girl's team. I think once it is sanctioned or known that it will be sanctioned, getting to the 120+/5+ mark will happen quite quickly. 

[Matt Time]

2 minutes ago, XCard said:

Which may be the case currently for some schools and a girl's team. I think once it is sanctioned or known that it will be sanctioned, getting to the 120+/5+ mark will happen quite quickly. 

IHSAA's position seems to be "show us the numbers and we'll create the opportunity." Whereas I think the IHSGW and IHSWCA have shown this year that if we "create the opportunity we can show the numbers." My question is what practical help will IHSAA begin to provide to help showcase, promote and help organize to help create more of those opportunities? Or will they just stay on the sidelines until they deem it worthy enough of their support and attention? With deep apologies to IHSAA, they're being very bureaucratic about this as an excuse to sit on their hands and provide zero assistance.

[aoberlin]

Here is a question. If it is sanctioned can the girls still practice with the boys? If not this causes some interesting challenges. Facility use and scheduling is the first that come to mind. During season many schools have youth programs that use the same room and mats. So there would be days that you would need to schedule girls practice, boys practice, then youth club practice. I can't think of any schools that only have one basketball court but on the other hand I don't know any schools that have more than one wrestling room. Then coaching challenges come in. It is already hard enough to find coaches let alone quality coaches to help with programs. This would add even more time and resources that are necessary. As far as the benefit for girls go at first this might be a step back. The State of Indiana had 2 Olympic wrestlers and that came from practicing and competing against boys. It will be quite a while before girl wrestling is built up enough for them to get the same competition they have now. Offseason will be able to offset much of this and possibly the solution would be to have the season offset from the current season to help with some of these things.

 

The other thing is the reality of getting to 5 wrestlers on 120 teams before this is sanctioned by the IHSAA and financially supported is going to be challenging for sure. We had 2 girls before covid and we lost them during that time. We have a couple in the youth program. But to be honest wrestling is just now becoming a more popular thing to do in our school for the boys let alone the girls. So getting girls out is also an issue for some schools. On top of that listening to Katie Kriebel at the ISWCA meeting was enlightening on how you should coach girls differently and I feel she had some very valid points. As a male I struggle to understand my wife all the time and we have been together for over 20 years. I personally don't have daughters so this is an arena that may need some honest guidance if you want to do it right especially for those of us without daughters.

 

Concerning funds someone told me that California didn't dedicate funds to girls wrestling but instead they took the boys funds and split it and from what I heard the boys numbers dropped. I can't find anything to back this up so please don't take it as a fact. 

 

I just think it needs to be looked at holistically from the top down and look at what the challenges and the possible outcomes will be for every school. The good and the bad.

 

I am supportive of all things wrestling. Including girls wrestling, especially after watching how good Juliano Ocampo is. I would really like to see it be it's own thing. 

 

I am sure there are a ton more people that have put more thought into than me and I would be happy to part of a much larger conversation of how to implement this successfully.

[GrecoCoach]

1 hour ago, aoberlin said:

Here is a question. If it is sanctioned can the girls still practice with the boys? If not this causes some interesting challenges. Facility use and scheduling is the first that come to mind. During season many schools have youth programs that use the same room and mats. So there would be days that you would need to schedule girls practice, boys practice, then youth club practice. I can't think of any schools that only have one basketball court but on the other hand I don't know any schools that have more than one wrestling room. Then coaching challenges come in. It is already hard enough to find coaches let alone quality coaches to help with programs. This would add even more time and resources that are necessary. As far as the benefit for girls go at first this might be a step back. The State of Indiana had 2 Olympic wrestlers and that came from practicing and competing against boys. It will be quite a while before girl wrestling is built up enough for them to get the same competition they have now. Offseason will be able to offset much of this and possibly the solution would be to have the season offset from the current season to help with some of these things.

The swim teams would be the best comparison. Most schools only have 1 pool, but have boys, girls, youth club, and sometimes swim lessons all happening during the same season.

 

Are the boys & girls swim teams allowed to practice together? Share coaches? I'd guess the IHSAA will keep that consistent with wrestling, too.

[aoberlin]

7 minutes ago, GrecoCoach said:

The swim teams would be the best comparison. Most schools only have 1 pool, but have boys, girls, youth club, and sometimes swim lessons all happening during the same season.

 

Are the boys & girls swim teams allowed to practice together? Share coaches? I'd guess the IHSAA will keep that consistent with wrestling, too.

With the pools are there usually enough lanes for both to practice at the same time?

[littlevito]

59 minutes ago, aoberlin said:

With the pools are there usually enough lanes for both to practice at the same time?

Both of our swim teams practice together. Same coaching staff for both.

[RAJR]

At some, usually smaller schools, the cross country & track teams practice together as well.  Many have the same coaches too.

[Matt Time]

We would not have survived this wrestling season, varsity, JV and the addition of the 5 girls invitations without a TON of assistant/volunteer support this year. Luckily, we have good alumni wrestlers and a few parents who know the sport well, hold USAW bronze coaching cards and were able to help us be in three places at once across the state every weekend with competent adult oversight.

[Y2CJ41]

Girls wrestling and boys volleyball just got sanctioned as emerging sports in Ohio this morning.

 

https://www.ohsaa.org/news-media/articles/ohsaa-to-add-girls-wrestling-and-boys-volleyball

[tskin]

My guess would be just like in soccer ( i used to coach soccer back in the day)

 

Once the IHSAA sanctions girl wrestling then girls participating in the boys events then would fall on their schools.

 

When I coached at Scottsburg we only had a boys soccer team even though girls soccer was sanctioned.  So girls where allowed to play on the boys soccer team.

[bomber_bob]

17 minutes ago, tskin said:

My guess would be just like in soccer ( i used to coach soccer back in the day)

 

Once the IHSAA sanctions girl wrestling then girls participating in the boys events then would fall on their schools.

 

When I coached at Scottsburg we only had a boys soccer team even though girls soccer was sanctioned.  So girls where allowed to play on the boys soccer team.

The only problem with this would be that one girl can't compete on a soccer team by herself, whereas one girl can compete in the Girl's State Tournament in a sport like wrestling. Can she wrestle all season on the boys team and then compete in the Girl's Sectional as an Individual?

 

I would think the two teams can practice together just like teams already do in XC, swimming, track, etc....however, once Girl's wrestling is sanctioned, I think it will have to be completely separate from one another. 

[MattM]

1 hour ago, tskin said:

When I coached at Scottsburg we only had a boys soccer team even though girls soccer was sanctioned.  So girls where allowed to play on the boys soccer team.

Trinity Lutheran in Seymour had or maybe still had a similar situations due to girls participation numbers. 

[MattM]

1 hour ago, bomber_bob said:

 Can she wrestle all season on the boys team and then compete in the Girl's Sectional as an Individual?

I wouldn’t think this would be a good option for many schools to start out with until girls participation numbers and coaching availability increase in many areas of the state.  I know some other state are set up that way.  

 

Ideally it would be nice to have a separate girls team, but it’s going to be a building process considering it hard to even get a full boys teams due to the weight class separate.  Not to mention an added coach so you can have a team at two or even three events at the same time.  

 

I think they could somewhat quickly build the state tournament series numbers to having three levels (regional, semi-state, and state),  But for the first few years the in-season team event maybe hard to come by in most regions of the state to get an adequate amount of competition without the girls at least being able to participate in boys JV scene.  Then as word gets out of it being a IHSAA sanctions that has a state tournament awards and more college scholarship opportunities we may see things grow to a more sustainable level.  

 

The growth will come faster with an actual IHSAA sanctions label and state tournament attached to it more than an “emerging sport” one  and no official state tournament.  But there will likely still need to be a few year for the numbers to provide that most girls will get solid mat time to not have to rely on matches at some boys events too.  

 

But, I’m not sure from his comments if Faulkin sees it that way yet.  Or maybe this is his way of trying to really prolonging the possibility of the IHSAA supporting it, by ensuring a huge amount of participation per school is there as an “emerging sport” before they would ever vote on sanctioning it.   Participation which may be hard to maintain did the mat time isn’t there.  

Edited January 13, 2022 by MattM

[Matt Time]

IHSAA should lead, follow or get out of the way. Their authority comes from us, the schools, to help ensure student athlete safety, competitive fairness and a degree of organization. Here's a novel idea: ask the schools what kind of help we need and what our concerns are and figure out how to help get this to where we want it. Every conversation emanating out of IHSAA on this topic sounds like bureaucratic process steps about us meeting their criteria instead of them asking us what can be done to help to get us where we want to go.

[TripleB]

So why was the tournament ran the exact way the IHSAA runs state? Seems like a good chance to show them the benefit of running wrestle backs. 

What a wasted opportunity!

[SunDevils]

In Texas girls & boys wrestling runs concurrently. Girls must compete exclusively with girls and boys with boys. When a team enters a tournament they host both girls and boys at the same tournament. 
 

At times you’ll have 64 teams represented at a single tournament 32 girls and 32 boys. Granted high schools are much larger here so space isn’t at as much of a premium. Furthermore, a majority of districts have community football fields or athletic complexes. For example, imagine the MIC built a centrally located athletic complex to host events for all of its teams.