Long time in the making: IHSA adds girls wrestling state tournament
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (BVM) — Girls high school wrestling continues to emerge across the country. More and more girls are competing in the sport, and with the increase, 25 states across the country have implemented sanctioned high school girls wrestling. This summer — in a long awaited move — Illinois became the 26th.
The Illinois High School Association (IHSA) has held a boys state wrestling tournament since 1937, and in 2022, they will add a girls tournament to the mix. The push for sanctioned girls wrestling at the high school level in Illinois has been in motion for a long time, specifically by the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association (IWCOA).
In 2017, the IWCOA implemented an all-girls state wrestling tournament, giving them a chance to compete in an end-of-season competition, but not an official IHSA event. The four-year run of this tournament has been successful, although it was halted this year due to COVID-19.
However, throughout the regular season, girls have been primarily wrestling on their schools’ boys teams. Some schools have seen a significant increase in the amount of girls on their team, such as Richwoods High School in Peoria, who had 15 girls compete on their squad this past season.
In recent years, four girls have even broken through and competed in the IHSA boys state wrestling tournament. Just one girl, Mia Palumbo, has won a match in the state tournament, actually winning two before losing in the state final. Palumbo — ranked No. 1 nationally in the USA Wrestling girls prep rankings at the 106-pound weight class — certainly helped bring further notice to girls wrestling in Illinois with her state performance.
Now with their own sport, the hope is more and more girls will try out to wrestle and the sport will increase even further in popularity. Wrestling against boys not only took a toll at times for the girls, but could create a sense of awkwardness for both genders on the mat, with boys sometimes refusing to wrestle girls.
Illinois’ neighbor to the west, Missouri, became the 9th state to sanction girls wrestling back in 2018. Just two short years later, over half the country has now done the same. The movement first gained serious steam when mentioned at an IHSA board meeting in March, and some of the numbers presented in the state were hard to ignore.
According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, in 2018-19, the state of Illinois ranked fifth nationally with 676 girls competing in high school wrestling. Last season, the number of girls competing in wrestling rose to 837.
With more and more girls competing, and so many talented wrestlers that deserved the same end-of-season recognition as the boys get, the IHSA knew making a move would be beneficial. In June, a sanctioned state tournament for the girls was approved by the Board of Directors in a unanimous 10-0 vote.
“I commend the Board on their vision to further the IHSA mission by continuing to seek out more participation opportunities for high school students in Illinois,” IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson said in a statement. “Participation in high school girls wrestling has grown significantly over the past few years, and we expect this announcement will only help increase that momentum here in Illinois.”
Specifics of the 2022 state tournament are yet to be determined, including date, location, and numbers. The boys tournament is held at the State Farm Center on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, and it is possible the girls tournament is held there as well at the same time.
With schematics still to be figured out, the IHSA will use this upcoming year to determine how they will proceed with girls wrestling and their state tournament.
“Our staff will use the lead time in the 2020-21 school year to best decide how the IHSA Girls Wrestling State Series fits within the current wrestling state series structure, including the dates and locations of each level of the tournament,” Anderson continued in his statement.
Schools will also have to decide if and how to implement girls wrestling by 2021-22. The sport will become the 17th girls sport sanctioned by the IHSA, and will give them another winter sport opportunity.
For now, joy remains across the state that this move finally happened. Female wrestling isn’t just increasing at the high school level, but also at the collegiate level as well, as over 35 NCAA institutions have implemented a women’s wrestling program.
Illinois joins a growing trend across the country, and the hope is that this move can influence some of their neighboring states in the Midwest as well. If there is one thing that is certain from this move and that of other states, it is that girls wrestling is growing rapidly, and they deserve the opportunity to their own sport.