High school · Connecticut
Connecticut high school girls' wrestling
CIAC has crowned girls' state champions in Connecticut since 2020. 449 girls wrestled here in 2025-26.
By Joe Spisak, Pennsylvania state champion and 4x NCAA qualifier at Virginia · Published September 3, 2026
The association
Sanctioned
- Association
- CIAC
- Girls' championship
- Yes, first held in 2020
- Format
- Girls' divisions inside the state wrestling championships
- Source
- nfhs.org, read 2026-09-03
What the record shows
Connecticut matches none of the three NFHS girls sets: the CIAC uses the 12 class girls set plus an added 285 pound class, 13 in all. The event began in 2020 as the CIAC Girls Wrestling Invitational and is now published as the CIAC Girls Wrestling State Championship.
The 2026-27 Connecticut championship carries the dates, the venue, and the qualifying path.
How many girls wrestle in Connecticut
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 92 more girls than 2024-25, up 25.8 percent.
Weight classes
We could not establish which of the three NFHS girls' sets CIAC uses from the pages we read, so this page prints none.
A missing table beats a wrong one. The NFHS offers three girls' sets of 12, 13 and 14 classes and they do not share limits, so printing the wrong one would hand a wrestler a class her state does not wrestle. All three sets are here, and the one your state uses is on your association's wrestling page or in the season bulletin your coach has.
What to do if your school has no girls' team
CIAC publishes a rule for this. Girls wrestle for their own school in the regular season and in the divisional class state tournaments. A girl who qualifies for the State Open chooses either the Open or the Girls Championship, not both. Girls from schools with few wrestlers may join a host school as a collaborative team, capped at six athletes from any one school.
From ciac.fpsports.org, read 2026-09-03. The rule is the association's to change; the link goes to the page that will carry the change.
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 CIAC 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 Connecticut 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 Connecticut wrestler goes from here.
College in the state
2 colleges here sponsor women's wrestling, from the directory built off each school's own athletics staff page.
- Sacred HeartNCAA D1
- BridgeportNCAA D2
Wrestlers from Connecticut
No wrestler in the record names Connecticut as home yet. The roster grows every week, and it is the same sport in every room.
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 CIAC'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.
The newsletter
One email. The rules, the gear, the college path.
For wrestlers, parents, and coaches. Same standard as the site: every number sourced, no filler, unsubscribe any time.