OHSAA move emotional for wrestlers, coaches

Brian Nicola almost couldn’t believe it when he got an email just past midnight, in the wee hours of what was technically Thursday morning. Up long past the time he’d usually have gone to bed, the Olentangy Orange girls wrestling coach read the note as soon as it arrived.

The email was from Ohio High School Athletic Association executive director Doug Ute. Ute was informing Nicola and the other representatives from the Ohio High School Wrestling Coaches Association who had fought for girls wrestling to be sanctioned by the OHSAA that their work had paid off. Sanctioning girls wrestling was going to be voted on at Thursday’s board meeting, and it was going to pass.

“We thought it might happen (Thursday), but we just didn’t know,” Nicola said. “We heard that all the votes were in place . ... (The email) came through and I was losing my mind. I got choked up.”

Nicola was one of a handful of association representatives who pitched girls wrestling to the OHSAA, but the sum total of the people involved in the grassroots effort reaches into the hundreds. The coaches association held the first girls state tournament in February 2020, the #Sanctionoh movement officially launched in June 2020 and momentum kept building from there.

In 2011-12, 123 girls wrestled in Ohio, and that number grew to 474 by 2019-20 — the first year of the state tournament. This season, there are over 800 girls wrestling in the state.

With Thursday’s vote, Ohio became the 33rd state to officially sanction girls wrestling.

For Nicola and the countless others who worked to get girls wrestling sanctioned, finally hearing the news was poignant.

“(Thursday) morning when it came through, it was pretty emotional,” Nicola said. “I talked to all the other people. Everybody was at work, cutting onions. It was exciting, and the girls are overjoyed.”

Girls have been competing on boys wrestling teams for years. Last spring, Miami East’s Olivia Shore became the first female wrestler in Ohio history to place at the OHSAA state tournament with a sixth-place finish at 106 pounds in Division III.

Now, though, the girls who have long competed against boys will have their own, officially sanctioned postseason tournament, giving them the same chance to win a state championship as their male counterparts.

“It changes a lot for a lot of programs,” Nicola said. “It gives a lot of validity to the girls and the work that they’ve been doing. If they’re coming in and doing the same stuff, they should have the same opportunity.” bjohnson@dispatch.com @baileyajohnson_