Wrestle Like a Girl!
January 22, 2022 will forever be remembered as a historic day for girls high school athletics in the state of Iowa. Inside Xtreme Arena in Coralville, Iowa over 700 girls filled the arena’s floor with nerves of steel and hearts set on coming out on top of the girls wrestling championships sponsored by the Iowa Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association. Around the halfway point of the matches for the day, all the girls taking part in the tournament grouped up in each of their weight classes and had one representative hold a sign with their class number on it. What seemed like an ordinary photo opportunity of all the wrestlers turned into a special announcement when Jean Berger, the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union (IGHSAU) Executive Director, stepped out on the mat and grabbed the microphone.
“I’m not going to say very much. Thank you all for being here. We have some championships to settle later on. There is one thing that I would like to say. And that is, we sanctioned girls wrestling,” Berger said.
The words were met with thunderous applause from the crowd as the girls held up their signs to reveal the backs of them spelling out “SANCTIONED 2022”.
Iowa became the 34th state to officially sanction high school girls wrestling and it becomes the 11th girls sanctioned sport in the state. The latest added sport was bowling all the way back in 2007. Jason Eslinger, the Associate Director of the IGHSAU, talked about the process of getting girls wrestling sanctioned.
“We had fun throughout this process. We monitored it like we monitor a lot of things when it comes to emerging sports…. We have a policy in place where we have to have a certain amount of our membership commit to it. We were ready, but we wanted the schools to be ready as well,” Eslinger said.
Flash forward to now. The girls wrestling season is getting underway with practices just taking shape at the beginning of November. As of right now, the state expects around 60+ schools to “field” a girls wrestling program. The reason for the quotations is because it is expected that some schools may team up with other schools when it comes to wrestlers. This first year of state tournament wrestling will NOT feature teams going up against one another.
“If you’re going to start something you want it to be done right,” Eslinger says. “Our state tournaments are a big deal to us, so it’s not like you want to just go in there and toss out a couple mats during the boy’s tournament and you go. That’s not how we do things.”
Eslinger sets a standard that many expect when you attend a girls post-season tournament here in Iowa. It is an event. From the IGHSAU logos everywhere you look, to the coaches and players lounges, and the bright pink covering every surface, the girls just do it right.
The IGHSAU went as far as to hire Erin Kirtley, a former Athletic Director at Panorama, to hop on as the Union’s wrestling administrator.
“(Erin) did a lot of the leg work for us and got us to the point where we were ready to announce it,” Kirtley said.
Kirtley released a statement back in January about her new position and the news of girls wrestling in Iowa.
“I’m honored to have been given the job as a catalyst to get this part of the process accomplished for the girls in our state. While we have closed the book on formal sanctioning, we look forward to opening the next one now as we highlight all the great stories our female wrestlers are continuing to write. The IGHSAU has said from the beginning that our intent is to do what is best for the girls who participate. We look forward to giving them the same amazing experiences as the other ten sports under our umbrella, and to leave nothing spared when it comes to building them as student athletes and leaders. We also look forward to supporting the coaches and officials who serve alongside these athletes, and to give their fans a greater appreciation for what these females already do day in and day out.”
Kirtley also just recently announced on her Facebook page that over 2,000+ girls will wrestle this winter which is more than double the amount that participated last season.
History was made when the first official girls wrestling meet took place on Monday, November 14th when Dallas Center Grimes hosted Ankeny, Spencer and Waverly Shell Rock in a four-team dual meet. Kirtley was present at the duel and spoke to the crowd before the action took place.
“This has been a long time coming…. Really excited to watch everything that’s going to transpire this next season,” Kirtley said.
DCG would go on to win both duels. The process of getting girls wrestling in the state of Iowa was a long tedious journey and one that will go down as a historic first for young woman in our state. In four months, over 200 girls will be right back where their sport was sanctioned in the first place, Xtreme Arena, to crown the first ever Iowa girls state wrestling champions. An achievement that will forever go down in Iowa High School Athletic history.
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