Among dozens of mats and rings, high school girls and their coaches cheered, danced and celebrated in a space specifically made for them. Thousands of female wrestlers packed into the FARGODOME for the 2025 USA Wrestling Junior and 16U National Championships, an event that even 20 years ago would have seemed unthinkable.
“These kinds of experiences have a special place in my heart,” says Katie Kriebel, USA Wrestling’s manager of athlete career transition and women’s inclusion.
When Kriebel graduated from high school in 1998, she was used to being the only woman in the gym. “Things that were our wildest dreams then are normal today. I got to be in a lot of firsts,” Kriebel remembers. “They announced in 2000 that women’s wrestling was going to be in the 2004 Olympics, and I graduated college in 2002 and got to come straight to the Olympic Training Center as a part of the first group of women who were fortunate enough to get to train and live here.”
Kriebel spent the majority of her 18U wrestling career competing against boys, as did most female wrestlers of the era. While female-only tournaments were just beginning to surface 25 years ago, today they are increasingly common. The Championships in Fargo, N.D., included an entire day of competition that was female-only.
Says Kriebel, “The whole vibe of the entire room was like fun and dancing and cheering, and it was really cool to experience a specifically female space of wrestlers.”
Competitions and teams specifically designed for female wrestlers aren’t going anywhere.
Photos courtesy of Cornell College
‘A very empowering sport’
As of August 2025, there were six Division I women’s wrestling teams, 37 Division II teams, 73 Division III teams, 50 NAIA teams, 30 NJCAA teams, and over 100 clubs. An estimated 517,000 women participated in the sport of wrestling in 2024, according to SFIA’s Wrestling Single Sport Report, and this summer, the NCAA announced that women’s wrestling would be the organization’s 91st championship sport, elevating it from its prior status as an emerging sport for women.
Girls’ and women’s wrestling is markedly different from boys’ and men’s wrestling. From a different wrestling style and point system to differences in safe weight-cutting techniques, when women take to the mat, it is a unique experience. These differences made it especially difficult for women like Kriebel, who came up in the sport before women’s teams existed.
“Most of us learned folk style, because that is the boys’ high school and college style,” explains Kriebel. “But I was lucky enough that my coaches had started looking into options by my junior year of high school. It became clear that freestyle was the female style, so I had a chance to learn a little bit of freestyle before I got to college.”
In freestyle wrestling, wrestlers may use both their arms and their legs to execute holds and score points. In folk style wrestling, also known as Greco-Roman, wrestlers may not attack below the waist or use their legs to execute holds. Women’s wrestling continues to compete in freestyle, just as women did when Kriebel began her collegiate career at the University of Minnesota – Morris, the first college in the country to sanction women’s wrestling.
“For all of us on that team, it was the first time that any of us got to experience what it’s like to be on a women’s team for the sport of wrestling,” she says. “It was pretty incredible. I got to experience the joy of having female teammates and feeling like I’m not the only one anymore.”
Boston Jacobs, the head women’s wrestling coach at Cornell College, one of 73 teams currently competing in Division III, says, “It’s crazy how many girls are around, and it is exciting to be a part of that and be able to build these women up. It’s just a very empowering sport.
“One after the next, you see women step up and come into fill roles that have traditionally been for men. That’s huge.”
Sanctioned at the high school level
California, Oregon and Texas were among the first states to sanction girls’ wrestling as a varsity sport, and participation continues to spread, providing a talent-development pipeline to the collegiate ranks.
“Sanctioning girls’ wrestling as a high school level sport is huge,” says Jacobs. “When they did that, it was much more exciting for the women because it was their own thing. They didn’t have to ride off the backs of the men. Now they have their own sport, and they get to claim it. That’s very important for them.”
The Indiana High School Sports Association sanctioned girls’ wrestling as a varsity sport for the 2024-25 season. At Taylor High School, just north of Indianapolis, about 20 girls showed up to the initial call-out meeting, a huge step up from the handful of girls who were interested in years past. Before 2024, girls at Taylor who were interested in wrestling had to train and compete with the boys, just like Katie Kriebel did back in the 1990s.
“We had girls wrestling with our boys’ team for probably six or maybe even seven years,” says Taylor athletic director Kirk Wiley. “The numbers were always kind of small. One, two, maybe three girls in a year because of that. There are girls who want to do it, and they were a little bit reserved, a little bit held back, knowing that they might have to wrestle against a boy.”
However, with the creation of a separate team and the addition of a new girls’ wrestling coach, dozens of girls felt confident enough to come to summer practices and learn more about the sport.
“That enthusiasm from the coach, I think, has gone a long way,” Wiley says. “I’m excited to see what Coach Wheeler is going to do and where she’s going to take the girls’ program.”
Coach Samantha Wheeler — as described by Wiley — eats, sleeps and breathes wrestling. Herself a Taylor graduate, Wheeler recently returned to the area with her husband and sons — all of whom wrestle. She has spent several years on the sidelines, learning about wrestling, helping her sons level up and earning her degree in early childhood education. Her husband is now the wrestling coach at the middle school in town.
“The biggest thing is just getting the girls to try it,” Wheeler says, speaking of her biggest challenges when stepping into the role.
Beyond building the team, Wheeler says the other, more obvious challenge has been teaching the girls how to wrestle. Only one athlete is returning for the 2025-26 school year — a girl who had wrestled on the boys’ team previously.
“We’re starting at kindergarten basics and working our way up to try to get them prepared for what they’ll see this season,” Wheeler says.
Despite starting with kindergarten basics, a day of Wheeler’s workouts is no playtime. “We’ll start with good warm-ups and try to get loose to prevent injuries. And then we will go into the hard drills,” she says. “I like aggressive wrestling, so we’ll teach shots, defense, how to escape. There’s a lot of running, a lot of gymnastics, tumbling, conditioning, huge sprint circuits, all that, because you need to be in good shape to wrestle.”
According to Wheeler, there have been more girls than boys showing up to summer practices, which were scheduled three days per week, and that level of dedication is a good sign of things to come for Taylor High School’s girls’ team. “I tell them straight up that it is hard work, but that is what makes you proud of it,” says Wheeler. “You’re going to leave sweaty and tired, but knowing that you got better by the end of the practice, and your teammates and your coaches have your back.”
As Wheeler prepares to kick off the 2025-26 season, her toughest challenges pivot from gaining student-athlete interest and teaching fundamentals to fundraising. Wheeler still needs to find additional resources to cover the team’s singlets and practice gear, which could mean working with local sponsors or individual donors.
The challenge of funding a new team is familiar to Kriebel. She says partnering with local organizations that have a history of championing and supporting women’s sports can be important for emerging programs.
“One of my goals,” says Wheeler, “is to see the girls who we have now continue and stay with it throughout the season. It will be hard, but I feel like a couple of them have potential. I want them to gain confidence, win or lose. They’ve done something they’ve never done before. That speaks volumes and builds character.”
Having spent her high school career in Indiana long before girls’ wrestling was a sanctioned sport, Kriebel knows all about strength of character. “When Indiana sanctioned, the participation numbers skyrocketed the following year, and we see that across the board and in the states,” she says.
Thanks to that booming participation, some of Wheeler’s athletes may soon consider post-high school competition, just like Kriebel had the opportunity to do. Girls on the hunt for college programs today have much broader options.
“We’re getting to a point where, if you are a high school senior considering your options, and your most important goal is an NCAA title, then you have 116” programs to consider, says Kriebel. “If you really want to go to the NCAA at a Division-I school, you have six options. If you have specific academic goals and want high-level training, there are 61 institutions with clubs.”
While competing in college may be a distant dream for Wheeler’s wrestlers, she says one of her top priorities is to instill pride in the girls for trying something new. She hopes the team at Taylor High School feels the value of hard work.
“Of course, I’d like to have a state champion,” the first-year coach says, “but I know it’s the first year, and I know the main thing is letting them know that they can do it and showing them that they can do it.”
Growth of college programs
From Cornell’s campus in Mount Vernon, Iowa, Boston Jacobs suspects that, in his state, “Everybody is related to somebody who wrestles if they don’t wrestle themselves.”
Wrestling culture in Iowa runs deep. The University of Iowa was the first Power Four school to add women’s wrestling as a varsity program, and the Hawkeyes’ men’s team has claimed 24 NCAA Championship team titles.
“In places where wrestling is a bigger deal,” Jacobs says, “you’ll have infrastructure in place to support girls’ wrestling.”
And that infrastructure is what Jacobs has found at Cornell College. Originally hired as an assistant coach of strength and conditioning for the men’s wrestling program, Jacobs took on the role of women’s head coach in 2023. When he first entered the gym, he found a surprisingly similar team structure to what Wheeler is confronting at Taylor High School.
Upon assuming his current position at Cornell, Jacobs found that of his eight wrestlers, only half had significant experience. “It was a big mix,” he says. “I had a girl who transferred here as a junior college national champion, and then on the other end, I had a girl who had never wrestled, ever.”
Since his first year, Jacobs has learned that “building relationships is a big one for me in this program.”
Those relationships were key in his recruiting efforts, as he grew the team from those original eight to 15 and now to a 25-woman roster heading into the 2025-26 season. Jacobs says his priority now that he has grown the team is to shape the team culture.
“We’re starting to get more and more girls that are dug into the lifestyle of wrestling,” says Jacobs. “They want to come here. They want to wrestle. They’re putting in the extra work, so I’m excited to see that.”
When the women at Cornell College put in the work, they are practicing alongside the men with what Jacobs calls a “skyrocketing” atmosphere. The men’s and women’s teams at Cornell are managed separately, but running the teams “as a brother-sister program” has created a powerful energy.
“Historically, we have had a successful men’s program, and they [the women] can watch and see what the day-to-day brings,” Jacobs says. “We’ll warm up together and be in the same room. It’s a different level of intensity.”
Despite sharing some practice time with the men, Jacobs has made a point to individualize his women’s wrestling program as much as possible. “All our practice gear that I buy says ‘Women’s Wrestling.’ I think it is important that it says that,” he says. “Not everyone liked that I had women’s wrestling on stuff because, they didn’t do that for other sports. The basketball team doesn’t say ‘Women’s Basketball,’ the women’s soccer team doesn’t say ‘Women’s Soccer,’ it just says ‘Soccer.’ But this is what they’re proud of right now. You have to have this. They don’t want to wear wrestling gear out and have people assume that it is their boyfriend’s shirt. They want people to know that this is women’s wrestling. It gives them their own, and they get to own it.”
The opportunity for women to wrestle at Cornell College started small, thanks to the hard work and determination of a few young women and dedicated coaches. The same is true of most other collegiate women’s programs. Says Kriebel, “We’ve got incredible young ladies who are students in college, with or without wrestling experience, who have decided to open the doors for girls who come after them and start a women’s club.”
Photo courtesy of Taylor High School
Hopes and challenges ahead
The unprecedented growth of women’s wrestling may leave the impression that the problems of the past are far behind both coaches and athletes, but there is still a long road ahead, and all recognize that challenges still exist.
“Some of the challenges that I’m still hearing about are men’s coaches not being on board,” says Jacobs, recalling that some schools are still “dumping” women’s wrestling onto high school coaches without giving the women the time or space they deserve. “I’ve heard plenty of stories of girls getting pushed to the side in rooms and not getting attention. The high school coaches aren’t set up so they can go to tournaments and get them a better experience.”
In many areas where girls’ wrestling has been newly sanctioned, there are still girls wrestling with the boys in a combined team. While Jacobs’ Iowa has seen massive investment in girls’ and women’s wrestling, he knows that many schools and clubs aren’t set up for the popularity girls’ wrestling has gained.
“It frustrates me that there are some programs that don’t have a split program yet,” he says. “And there are still girls on the boys’ teams if they don’t have a girls’ coach.”
Part of Kriebel’s new position with USA Wrestling seeks to lessen those challenges at the college level. “There’s a need for USA Wrestling to have more involvement in the growth of D-I women’s wrestling,” she says. “So many [women’s wrestling teams] are less than five years old. They all need support. They need boots on the ground. They need someone who has CEO skills and can understand big-picture things. Every once in a while, you get someone who has coaching experience and CEO leadership experience, who has the administrative chops to understand how to run a program, and they happen to be a coach. So, finding someone who understands that you need to fundraise and understands how to run an event and can help with recruiting and can work with school administrators. All of that is a big deal.”
The NCAA’s classification of women’s wrestling as a championship sport will allocate $1.7 million in association-wide funding to the women’s wrestling championships. Next year will mark the first year of the championships and include student-athletes from Division I, II and III programs. The 2026 championships will be held in March at Coralville, Iowa’s Xtream Arena, featuring 180 competitors among 10 weight classes.
As women’s wrestling gains athletes and fans, Jacobs’ hopes for his program speak wider truths for the sport as a whole. “I want to make better wrestlers,” he says. “But at the end of the day, what sport gives you beyond that is so much more important and lives longer.”
Even at the high school level, Wheeler approaches her team with a similar mindset. “We want to support these girls,” she says. “We want to build a foundation with these girls and make sure that they know that they’re supported, especially in a sport that’s not typically made for girls.”
Photo courtesy of Taylor High School
