High school · California
California high school girls' wrestling
CIF has crowned girls' state champions in California since 2011. 10,204 girls wrestled here in 2025-26, at 861 schools.
By Joe Spisak, Pennsylvania state champion and 4x NCAA qualifier at Virginia · Published September 3, 2026
The association
Sanctioned
- Association
- CIF
- Girls' championship
- Yes, first held in 2011
- Format
- Girls' divisions inside the state wrestling championships
- Source
- themat.com, read 2026-09-03
What the record shows
The first CIF statewide girls event, in March 2011, was titled an Invitational; CIF now runs and publishes it as the CIF State Girls Wrestling Championships. Some third-party listings show the girls brackets as 102, 107, 112 and so on, which is the same set with the 2 pound growth allowance added; CIF's own page uses the scratch weights.
The 2026-27 California championship carries the dates, the venue, and the qualifying path.
How many girls wrestle in California
The NFHS High School Athletics Participation Survey, girls' wrestling column. Every number here is the survey's own; nothing is estimated or carried forward.
That is 1,373 more girls than 2024-25, up 15.5 percent.
Weight classes
CIF uses the NFHS 14 class girls' set. The NFHS offers three, and a state association picks one and cannot switch mid-season.
- 100
- 105
- 110
- 115
- 120
- 125
- 130
- 135
- 140
- 145
- 155
- 170
- 190
- 235
Scratch weights, in pounds. Most associations add a growth allowance partway through the season, so a bracket in February may read two pounds higher than this. Read off cifstate.org on 2026-09-03. Every set at every level puts this beside the NCAA, NAIA and international weights.
What to do if your school has no girls' team
We found no published CIF rule covering a girl whose school has no girls' team. That is not the same as a ban, and it usually means the answer is local rather than statewide.
The general path, in the order that works: ask the athletic director first, in writing, whether the school will enter you and under what rule. Most schools have never been asked, and the answer to a written question goes on the record in a way a hallway conversation does not. If the school will not enter you, ask CIF directly what a student in your position may do; associations answer these, and the answer is the one that binds your school.
Train while you sort it out. A club room is where most girls in a state without a school team actually wrestle, and club season runs when the school season does not. The clubs in California are listed by city, with the girls' rooms and girls' practices flagged where the club says so.
Where it goes next
The state final is not the end of the line. These are the two places a California wrestler goes from here.
College in the state
8 colleges here sponsor women's wrestling, from the directory built off each school's own athletics staff page.
- MenloNCAA D2
- VanguardNCAA D2
- Life Pacific UniversityNAIA
- Menlo CollegeNAIA
- Simpson UniversityNAIA
- Bakersfield CollegeNJCAA/JUCO
- College of the RedwoodsNJCAA/JUCO
- Mt. San Antonio CollegeNJCAA/JUCO
Wrestlers from California
14 women in the record we keep grew up here. Their careers started in a room like the one down the road.
Before the season starts
A girl's legal minimum wrestling weight is built on the 19 percent body fat floor the NFHS sets for girls, not the boys' 7 percent. That is roughly sixteen pounds of difference for a fifteen year old, and every app built on the boys' number gets it wrong. How making weight works covers certification and what your state enforces at the scale.
This page was read on 2026-09-03, off CIF's own pages and the NFHS participation survey. Associations change rules in the spring and post the new ones late; the links here go to the page that will carry the change first.
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