Fargo: the Junior and 16U Nationals

The full name is the U.S. Marine Corps Junior and 16U Nationals. USA Wrestling runs it, the U.S. Marine Corps is the title sponsor, and it has been at the FARGODOME on the North Dakota State campus since 1993. Everyone in the sport just says Fargo.

It crowns national champions in the three Olympic disciplines, men's freestyle, women's freestyle and Greco-Roman, in two age groups. The Junior division is high school wrestlers in grades 9 through 12. The 16U division, called the Cadet Nationals until the name changed, is for athletes who turned 15 or 16 during the calendar year. A 16U wrestler may enter the Junior division as well, and a few do both in the same week.

The scale is the point. The 2026 edition ran over nine days and expected roughly 9,000 entries; the 2025 tournament was contested across 30 mats. The first Junior Nationals was held in Iowa City in 1971 with only a men's freestyle division, and 2026 was its 55th year; the only season missed was 2020, to the pandemic. The 16U tournament, then the Cadet Nationals, merged into the same event in 1996.

2002 is the year women's freestyle came to Fargo. The Junior women's division was contested for the first time that summer, and Rachel Holthaus of Minnesota won at 95 pounds to become the first Junior women's champion in the tournament's history. USA Wrestling still measures state streaks from that year.

The 16U girls' division started in 2011. Until then the Junior bracket was the only one a girl could enter, whatever her age, so a 15 year old wrestled the seniors. The two divisions now run back to back at the end of the week.

The growth is the story a rankings list will not tell you. In 2026 the Junior girls' division set a record with 1,269 wrestlers and the 16U girls' division drew 1,024, its second straight year over a thousand. Six wrestlers entered both, so 2,287 individual women competed, the most ever in the women's divisions at Fargo, and 39 states put a wrestler on a podium. Pennsylvania won both women's team titles.

You do not enter Fargo. Your state does. Athletes wrestle on a state team, and USA Wrestling publishes each state team roster in the weeks before the event as the state association submits it. The association picks the team, so the qualifying path is set at state level and differs from state to state.

Two things are common to most of them. The first is the state's own freestyle and Greco-Roman championships, usually in April or May, which is where a place earns a spot. The second is a USA Wrestling regional championship: seven of them run each spring, in the Northwest, Western, Northern Plains, Central, Southern Plains, Northeast and Southeast, and several state associations count a top placement there. Every regional date we could read off USA Wrestling's own page is on the calendar.

The practical answer for a high school girl: wrestle your state series in the winter, then ask your state association in February what its freestyle season looks like. The team is usually full by June.

FloWrestling is the host broadcast partner and streams every mat. A subscription is required, and there is no free feed. flowrestling.org

USA Bracketing carries the brackets and live results, free, and is where to follow a wrestler match by match. usabracketing.com

USA Wrestling's own event hub carries the session schedule, the state team rosters as they are submitted, and the ticket link through the North Dakota State box office. The 2026 event page is the shape the 2027 one will take.