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More girls playing high school sports in NC than ever before : ‘We’ve come a long way, baby’

After an alarming decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, more girls are participating in high school sports in North Carolina than ever before.
Que Tucker played high school basketball as a student at Stoneville High School in Reidsville in the late 1960s. At the time, it was the only sport girls could play, but it wasn’t the only sport Tucker was interested in. “I look back and I think about what I could have participated in because I wanted to. I mean, I high jumped when I was in high school, but it wasn’t on an organized track team, it was just in a sawdust pit at a field day with four or five schools in Rockingham County,” Tucker said.
Title IX of the Civil Rights Act was not signed into law until 1972, so opportunities for girls in sports were limited. “You know that old saying that we used to see a lot – ‘we’ve come a long way, baby.’ I look back and I think about that now, and we truly have come a long way,” said Tucker. “I think we see that in so many different areas.”
Now the first female commissioner of the N.C. High School Athletic Association, Tucker is seeing the results firsthand. According to data released by the NCHSAA, there have never been more girls playing high school sports in North Carolina than there are today.
During the 2023-2024 school year, the number of girls playing high school sports in the state surpassed 90,000 for the first time ever. Every single sanctioned girls sport saw participation rise, bringing the total number of female participants to 91,111, representing an increase of 6.6% from the prior school year.
The previous all-time high was 89,826 set during the 2016-2017 school year. …

The pandemic effect
After the COVID-19 pandemic, girls sports participation dropped 12.5% in North Carolina to 76,612 athletes. It was the lowest participation rate among girls in two decades. But in just two years, the NCHSAA has seen a full recovery and is now setting participation records.
While it was not shocking participation dropped during and immediately after the pandemic, the drop in female participation was alarming, and significantly higher than the 6.4% decline seen in boys sports. “I just think that perhaps coming out of COVID … perhaps our girls were a little slower to get back into the mix of playing multiple sports, maybe even just playing one sport” said Tucker.
Boys participation returned to pre-pandemic levels during the 2022-2023 school year and grew another 4.5% this past school year to 117,611.
Girls participation has never matched or surpassed boys participation in North Carolina high school sports, but the impact of the pandemic was seen more widely on the girls side. Multiple surveys of athletic directors conducted by HighSchoolOT in 2020 and 2021 showed a high level of concern about girls sports participation.
But now the pandemic may be creating new opportunities.
This past fall, a new record was set for the number of schools offering girls golf and the number of girls participating in the sport statewide. …

New opportunities for girls in sports
This past winter, the NCHSAA officially sanctioned girls wrestling for the first time. A total of 1,432 girls wrestlers from 248 different schools participated in the sport, which culminated in an individual wrestling state championship tournament. It was the product of several years worth of work, which included a non-sanctioned girls wrestling invitational. “We’ve known for a number of years that it has grown, and I think after it was well known and well publicized that the 2023 school year would be the last year of an invitational, and that then the next year it would be standalone, I think we’ve just had a lot more girls participating in that sport in and of itself,” Tucker said.
In fact, the number of girls participating in wrestling grew by 74.4% from 2023 to 2024.

First NCHSAA girls wrestling champions crowned; Lumberton wins team title

“I think it’s very important, if for no other reason, we want to be an inclusive organization. We believe that every student-athlete who goes through the front door of a school should have the opportunity to participate in sports,” said Tucker. “It’s part of our mission. It’s part of what we want to do and what we want to be about, for us to provide those opportunities for females, for anybody who participates or who goes into the front door of our member schools.”
The NCHSAA Board of Directors approved the sanctioning of girls wrestling during the 50th anniversary of Title IX in 2022. “It took us a long time to get to where we were able to sanction wrestling, and our wrestling coaches, to their credit, they worked hard to try to maintain, to try to sustain the interest so that their numbers would be there,” said Tucker.
The hard work of wrestling coaches has not gone unnoticed at the school level either. East said the Millbrook wrestling coaches have done a good job of bringing out new female athletes. “I think our coaches do a good job of working the hallways and trying to find those kids that need some form of connection to the school in some way. I know I can say that a lot about our wrestlers because there are kids that basically don’t do anything else and they’re out there wrestling, which I thought was pretty cool,” he said. … more at … https://www.highschoolot.com/story/we-ve-come-a-long-way-baby-more-girls-playing-high-school-sports-in-nc-than-ever-before/21536255/

July 26, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Citadel Accepts Invitation to Compete at Inaugural Throwdown on the Yorktown

Tickets Available Now for Unprecedented Wrestling Duals
CHARLESTON, S.C. – A year removed from an unprecedented 14-win season this past year, The Citadel Wrestling has accepted an invitation to compete at the inaugural Throwdown on the Yorktown on Friday, Nov. 8 as part of the launch of the 2024-25 campaign, helping pioneer the dual-centric tournament hosted on the flight deck aboard the renowned USS Yorktown CV-10 Essex-class aircraft carrier anchored in the Charleston Harbor.
The Bulldogs will headline the event with a pair of matchups against Army and Virginia while six other programs including Gardner-Webb, Lander and Newberry as well as both the women’s squads from Presbyterian and Campbellsville will compete in duals throughout the evening as well.
Tickets for the event are limited to 1,100 spectators and went on sale the morning of Tuesday, July 23. … more at … https://citadelsports.com/news/2024/7/23/the-citadel-wrestling-accepts-invitation-to-compete-at-inaugural-throwdown-on-the-yorktown.aspx

July 26, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Former UNC Coach Coleman Scott joins Ohio RTC coaching staff

The Ohio Regional Training Center bolstered its staff this week with the addition of 2 high profile coaches: Kollin Moore and Coleman Scott. The Ohio RTC, which provides training opportunities for post-grads vying for World and Olympic spots as well as the club in which all current Buckeye wrestlers are members of, also includes the staff of the Ohio State coaches: Tom Ryan, J Jaggers, Bo Jordan and Logan Stieber.
Ohio State Head Coach and RTC staff member Tom Ryan had this to say about the hirings, “We couldn’t be more excited about the addition of Kollin and Coleman to our RTC staff! Obviously the RTC is so critical for the development and attraction to our college program and vice versa. Throwing 2 new high level wrestling minds in Kollin and Coleman into the mix is going to be fun and I know everyone around the program is very excited.”
Kollin Moore, a Buckeye legend via way of 2 Big Ten Titles and 4 NCAA All-American honors, has spent the last 4 years as an Ohio RTC resident athlete and recently announced his retirement from competing. In a natural move he was the first domino to fall for the Ohio RTC staff enhancement this summer. “We’ve known for a while that keeping Kollin on board would be critical upon his retirement. Guys like him are no brainers really. He was an incredible Buckeye athlete and has gathered so much experience internationally over the past few years. You couple that with his ability to connect with athletes and love for this place and, like I said, it made it priority number 1 for the Ohio RTC this summer.” Said fellow Ohio RTC coach Logan Stieber.
In the more surprising of the 2 new hires comes by the way of Oklahoma. Coleman Scott, an Olympic Bronze Medalist and NCAA Champion from Oklahoma State University, recently served as Oklahoma State Associate Head Coach. Before coaching at Oklahoma State for the 23-24 season he spent 8 years at the helm of the UNC Tar Heels. He will be bringing a wealth of knowledge and expertise to Columbus in his new role as an RTC Coach along with Moore.
Coach J Jaggers had this to say about adding Scott, “I mean…how can the idea of Coleman being here not get you fired up?” It was kind of wild how this came to be. It started as just a loose idea that we kind of thought was a pipe dream but over the past few months, through Coleman getting to know us and this place, along with him taking time off to determine what his next steps were going to be, we were able to work out a deal! I’ve known Coleman for 20 years as we are in same class and we were always wrestling in the same events. He’s someone I’ve always respected and felt was on the same wavelength as I/we were here at Ohio State with his approach to the sport and how to do things the right way. So having the chance to bring him to Columbus and a new dose of creativity/ideas is just super exciting.” … more at … https://www.themat.com/news/2024/july/23/ohio-rtc-adds-kollin-moore-and-coleman-scott-to-coaching-staff

July 26, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment