Takedown Report

New Jersey’s first girls’ wrestling season begins this week, and interest at one school has exploded

Abby Vance took an odd path to an unusual place: She went from the football field to the wrestling mat.  A senior at Kingsway Regional High School, Vance played in the Powder Puff football game, an annual non-tackle battle between girls in the junior and senior classes, and starred as a linebacker racing from sideline to sideline for the 12th-grade squad.  “The coach saw how athletic and aggressive I was, and he was like, ‘You totally should come out for wrestling,’ ” Vance said.

The 17-year-old signed up for the sport on a whim, took the mat for the first time earlier this month, and now is part of a remarkable wave of interest in girls’ wrestling at the school in Woolwich Township, Gloucester County.  
Vance is one of around 40 girls at Kingsway who have gone out for the sport, which will be sponsored by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association for the first time this season.    New Jersey is the first Mid-Atlantic state to offer girls’ wrestling and one of just 14 states in the nation to sponsor the sport. The other states are Texas, California, Hawaii, Tennessee, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Massachusetts, Arizona, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, and Maine.  Supporters of all-girls’ wrestling teams in Pennsylvania said they hope their state follows New Jersey with high school-sanctioned girls’ teams next year. Joe Stabilito, the boys’ wrestling coach at Upper Dublin High School and an officer at USA Wrestling, the national governing body for freestyle wrestling, said he has spent the last six years laying the groundwork for the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association to include girls on its roster of sports. He said he has several girls on his boys’ team this season.

“It’s a process that has lots of aspects to it,” Stabilito said of PIAA inclusion. “But there is no doubt that there has been an increase in interest. Girls’ wrestling is the fastest-growing sport.”  PIAA executive director Robert Lombardi said that about 180 girls are members of boys’ wrestling teams, and that number has stayed about the same for the last three years.  “We’re still in the infancy of this situation,” Lombardi said. “If interest grows, we’d certainly evaluate it and take a closer look at it.”

The wrestling season in New Jersey begins Friday. The state’s governing organization for high school sports will hold a girls-only regional tournament Feb. 17 at Red Bank Regional High School, with the top six qualifiers in each weight class advancing to the state championships March 1-2 at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.  NJSIAA assistant director Bill Bruno, who oversees wrestling, said there has been a surprising surge in interest around the state in female participation in the sport. But Bruno said Kingsway is the state’s hotbed for girls’ wrestling.  Rest of the story at http://www2.philly.com/high-school-sports/new-jersey/girls-wrestling-new-jersey-high-school-kingsway-20181212.html?mc_cid=a96abd6d61&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

December 13, 2018 - Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized