High school · Indiana
Indiana high school girls' wrestling
IHSAA (Indiana) has crowned girls' state champions in Indiana since 2025. 2,719 girls wrestled here in 2025-26, at 258 schools.
By Joe Spisak, Pennsylvania state champion and 4x NCAA qualifier at Virginia · Published September 3, 2026
The association
Sanctioned
- Association
- IHSAA (Indiana)
- Girls' championship
- Yes, first held in 2025
- Format
- A separate girls' championship, its own event
- Source
- ihsaa.org, read 2026-09-03
What the record shows
The IHSAA board approved full recognition in 2024 but the first IHSAA tournament ran in the 2024-25 school year, wrestled in January 2025. The records book states that from 2017 to 2024 the Indiana High School Girls Wrestling Coaches Association ran its own unsanctioned state tournament, so those champions are not IHSAA titles.
The 2026-27 Indiana championship carries the dates, the venue, and the qualifying path.
How many girls wrestle in Indiana
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 495 more girls than 2024-25, up 22.3 percent.
Weight classes
IHSAA (Indiana) 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 ihsaa.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
IHSAA (Indiana) publishes a rule for this. IHSAA treats boys wrestling and girls wrestling as two separate single gender sports and a female student may not wrestle in a boys program. Indiana also does not permit schools to combine into one team, so a girl whose school does not sponsor girls wrestling has no IHSAA published path to a team at another school.
From ihsaa.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 IHSAA (Indiana) 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 Indiana 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 Indiana wrestler goes from here.
College in the state
3 colleges here sponsor women's wrestling, from the directory built off each school's own athletics staff page.
- ManchesterNCAA D3
- TrineNCAA D3
- Indiana TechNAIA
Wrestlers from Indiana
4 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 IHSAA (Indiana)'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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