The AIA announced recently that girls wrestling will have its status of being an emerging sport changed to a full-fledged team sport starting in the 2020-21 schoolyear.
The debate about whether a girl should step on the wrestling mat, with a boy toeing the other line, has been going on for decades.
There is no debate in the mind of Basha’s Trinity Howard.
“This is something I’ve look forward to since I started wrestling,” she said. “I can tell you I wouldn’t still be wrestling if I had to continue competing against boys. Girls wrestling saved my passion.”
Howard sustained a scary injury in practice while working out with a boy. She hit her head on the mat in a “move gone wrong” and sustained a seizure. She was hospitalized and had to re-learn some motor skills like walking, talking, and reading.
It was a freak accident and might very well happen in competition with a girl as well, but Howard said because of the injury, she wouldn’t be wrestling if it weren’t a separate sport for girls.
“It’s hard to say,” she said when asked if she ever thought she’d stop wrestling all together after the injury.
“I definitely had my fair share of just wanting to have a break here and there, but to be honest I couldn’t imagine never wrestling again. What’s crazy is even when it was the hardest thing to come back (from the seizure), and have that feeling of starting from scratch, the drive and passion that I have to be a wrestler never let the idea of quitting actually cross my mind.”
Many females have similar sentiments as Howard, who finished second in state at 125 pounds, and are celebrating the AIA’s decision.
“Having girls wrestling recognized is obviously a big step and goes to show how much the sport has grown,” Casteel’s Isabelle Munoz, who finished second in state at 118 pounds, said. “It doesn’t change much (going from emerging to a team sport) for me though. We still have to put in the same amount of hard work and dedication, but it is nice to know that effort is now acknowledge.”
Girls wrestling has been hard to ignore from a growth standpoint. 2018-19 saw 224 girls participate, before nearly doubling to 435 competitors last season.
It’s gaining momentum nationally as well, thanks to the expansion of college programs (around 80 now), and the popularity of MMA competitors like Ronda Rousey. When Arizona started it as an emerging sport, it was just the eighth state to have girls wrestling as a sanctioned sport. Less than 24 months later, there are now 23 states that have separate state tournaments for girls according to the National Wrestling Coaches Association.
According to the National Federation of High Schools, girls wrestling participants have quadrupled since 2008, from 5,000 to more than 21,000 competitors nationally.
Before girls wrestling had its own designation in Arizona, there had been countless girls who earned their stripes as part of the boys squad, and handful of whom were even good enough to qualify for the state tournament. Corona del Sol’s Miyuu Yamamoto earned her way onto the podium in 1993 at 103 pounds and Coconino’s Shauna Isbell finished fourth at 112 pounds in 2009.
There will still be some girls who want the challenge of wrestling against the boys, as Chandler’s Stefana Jelacic did last year. She won the girls state title 2019, but went 0-2 at the boys state tournament, and is now headed to Lourdes University in Ohio to continue her career.
Jelacic is the rare case. She’s won national meets and has been competing for years in the sport. The addition of girls wrestling wouldn’t have impacted her much either way.
It’s now about the girls who will come out for a combative sport, learn the discipline, and work ethic it takes to stay with wrestling.
The hope is that continued growth will allow for schools to hire separate coaches, and teams being able to fill out a full 10-spot lineup more often than not. It has already reached the point that tournaments like the Flowing Wells Invitational, which will be two-days and give out a team trophy for the first-time next year, grows past the 150 competitors there were last season.
“There is nothing like getting your hand raised after defeating your opponent in a fair battle,” Casteel coach Bob Callison said. “It does not matter what your gender, race, age or socio-economic background is in competition. Only in combative sports do you get your hand raised at the end, and the girls want the adrenaline rush just as much as boys."
“Girls want to develop traits like courage, sacrifice, discipline, perseverance and now, they get that chance through wrestling.”
Jason P. Skoda can be reached at Jason@arizonavarsity.com with story ideas and comments.
