OHSAA should consider a division for girls wrestling

Have you ever wondered why the OHSAA doesn’t have girls wrestling? If your mind is boggled by the idea that one of the great wrestling states in the country doesn’t have a girls division, then join the club. Wrestling in Ohio is like NASCAR to North Carolina, basketball to New York and hockey to Minnesota.

The OHSAA state wrestling tournament in Columbus every March is a three-day whirlwind. The tension in the air is so thick your heart pounds as if you were the one out on the mat.

What makes it puzzling that Ohio hasn’t developed a separate girls high school sport is the that several states have already done so, where wrestling is arguably less popular in a few of those.

According to a tweet in May from Mike Moyer, executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association, seven states sponsor high school girls wrestling: California, Alaska, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii and Tennessee. There are nine more states pursuing it: Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado.

At the Lorain County Wrestling Coaches Officials Association meeting in March, president Rick Davis ran the idea past me of finding a way to evolve the sport to tap into an underrepresented market: Girls. At the Lorain All-Star meet at Elyria in March, two girls went head-to-head.

There has to be a way to expand interest in wrestling with females to the point were it could thrive as its own entity, similar to swimming, cross country and track and field.

Currently, girls are allowed to wrestle on a boys team. Will the OHSAA consider a girls wrestling division?

“It’s hard to tell what can happen five, 10, 15 years down the road,” said Tim Stried, the director of information services of the OHSAA. “The current number of girls in Ohio that wrestle we estimate to be a few dozen. So we very well could see a spike in that number, which would cause us to look at that option. But at the moment, we just don’t see enough participation from girls in wrestling to warrant them having their own division. And probably important to note too is the Wrestling Coaches Association has not expressed any interest in that. A lot of times ideas like that are born with the coaches’ association to bring them to the OHSAA for consideration. So that is another element to keep in mind.”

An email to the president of the Wrestling Coaches Association for comment was not returned.

In December, the Colorado High School Activities Association announced it would start a trial run for girls wrestling to gauge participation interest.

In January, the first test was put together, where more than 80 wrestlers and 42 schools competed in the first-ever high school girls wrestling tournament in Colorado.

Colorado at least got the memo: Girls wrestling is on the rise in the U.S. And it doesn’t want to waste any more time. This still doesn’t mean it’ll be a shoo-in that the sport gets approved. But the interest is there.

“We do communicate with other states quite a bit,” Stried added. “We are all under the governance of the National Federation of High Schools and we get a lot of our national headlines from the National Federation, so we’re aware of what other states are doing. There are several states that do have a separate division for girls wrestling, but it’s just not under consideration in Ohio right now.”

Now, obviously, a couple things can’t be ignored. It’s a big question as to whether athletic programs can afford to add another

program. Last year, the OHSAA added boys and girls lacrosse, which further pinches a school’s budget.

Another sticking point would be the long, drawnout process of adding it as a sport. There are a few road blocks that need to get cleared in order for a sport to get approved.

• It comes from a component of the OHSAA tournament regulation, which their staff puts together and presents to the board of directors and then the board approves them.

• Ultimately, it would need to be approved by the OHSAA Board of Directors. The idea would come from either the OHSAA staff making the suggestion or the coaches’ association making a presentation to the Board. It isn’t required to come from the coaches’ association, but sometimes proposals do.

• Even if approved, it would be up to each school to determine whether it can afford it.

• It’s a possibility there can be a separate girls division in Ohio, but not have a postseason tournament because of low numbers issue.

The urge to promote girls wrestling overall in the United States has sparked websites such as wrestlelikeagirl.org, an organization that promotes female wrestling and has the belief that girls should be given an opportunity to wrestle against each other the same way as boys in a separate division.

Additionally, according to nwcaonline.com:

1. Since 1994, the number of women who wrestle in high school has grown from 804 to 11,496.

2. 30 colleges now sponsor a varsity wrestling program.

3. Since 2004, women’s wrestling is now a recognized Olympic sport.

On a national scale, the interest in girls and women’s wrestling is there and continues to grow.

I hope one day I see the OHSAA take a page from Colorado and initiate the first step in running a trial run of girls tournaments to test the waters and make it work in Ohio.