The girls wrestling team is growing at Glenbard West
GLEN ELLYN, Ill. — When Illinois became the 28th state to sanction girls wrestling as a high school sport, the wrestling coaches at Glenbard West began recruiting last fall. They put up banners and visited gym classes to raise awareness and ended up with a varsity team of 12. Although girls have been involved with boys wrestling for years, everyone on this Glenbard team was starting from scratch.
Coach Nicholas Posegay, head coach of the boy wrestling team, and the rest of the wrestling staff worked with the new girls team and next year Coach Pat McCluskey will be head coach of girls wrestling. When talking about the 2021-22 season, McCluskey noted that their first meet was against Morton High School, who have had a girls wrestling team for 5 years. It was a tough first match.
When they saw them later in the season, “We got great compliments from the Morton coach who noticed the progress our team had made in such a short time period,” said McCluskey. Some schools they competed with had only one team member, but they also found that several schools in the conference, like Downers South, Oak Park and Addison Trail had 10 or more team members.
Women’s wrestling has been one of the fastest growing sports at the college level, and there are now 32 states with officially sanctioned girls teams at the high school level. In the state of Illinois, the 2021-22 school year was a historic season for girls wrestling, with their inaugural state championship series taking place in Bloomington last February.
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