Nevada high school girls' wrestling

NIAA has sanctioned girls' wrestling in Nevada and has not yet held the first state championship. 635 girls wrestled here in 2025-26, at 76 schools.

By Joe Spisak, Pennsylvania state champion and 4x NCAA qualifier at Virginia · Published September 3, 2026

The association

Sanctioned

Association: NIAA
Girls' championship: Yes, sanctioned and not yet held
Format: Girls' divisions inside the state wrestling championships
Source: drive.google.com, read 2026-10-18

What the record shows

Nevada has sanctioned girls' wrestling from the 2026-27 season and has not yet held its first girls' state championship. The NIAA Board of Control voted at its June 3-4, 2025 meeting "to approve the sanctioning of Girls Wrestling, starting in the 2026-27 school year, pending the approval of the proposed realignment"; the motion passed unopposed. The Board's January 27-28, 2026 minutes say girls' wrestling "was sanctioned and will be fully implemented as its own standalone state championship", and on June 2-3, 2026 the Board approved revisions to the 2026-27 calendar "including the addition of Girls Wrestling". Before that the NIAA ran a Girls State Invitational every season from 2022-23 through 2025-26 (niaa.com/sports/wrest/archive); the September 2022 Board vote created a girls division and was explicitly not a sanctioning. The NIAA's sources differ on the format: the minutes say standalone, while its meet page holds the State Girls Meet on the same days and at the same arena as the Class 3A and 2A boys' meets; the format shown here follows the meet page. Two NIAA documents still lag the vote. The 2026-2027 Wrestling Reference says the top four placers from each half "qualify for the eight (8)-person state girls wrestling invitational", a sentence carried word for word from the 2025-26 Reference. And NAC 385B.390, the regulation listing Nevada's sanctioned sports, still names wrestling for boys only; the Board may amend that list, and an amendment adding wrestling for girls was on the agenda for its September 22-23, 2026 meeting. The Wrestling Policy Manual, read 2026-09-20 and 09-22, was headed "Revised January 29, 2026" and said girls wrestling "will be sanctioned in the 2026-27 season". Read 2026-10-18, it is headed "Revised October 14, 2026", that sentence is gone, and it sends each girls' division's top four to the "Girls Division eight-person state championship meet". Both print the NFHS 14 class girls set.

The 2026-27 Nevada championship carries the dates, the venue, and the qualifying path.

How many girls wrestle in Nevada

The NFHS High School Athletics Participation Survey, girls' wrestling column. Every number here is the survey's own; nothing is estimated or carried forward.

Season	Girls	Schools
2025-26	635	76
2024-25	510	73

That is 125 more girls than 2024-25, up 24.5 percent.

Weight classes

NIAA uses the NFHS 14 class girls' set. The NFHS offers three, and a state association picks one and cannot switch mid-season. That is the 2025-26 set. As of 2026-09-22 NIAA had not posted its 2026-27 classes; states re-pick among the three sets each year, so the season bulletin your coach has is the final word until it does.

Scratch weights, in pounds. The NFHS book lets 2 pounds be added to each class after certification as a growth allowance (4-4-4), and the NIAA decides whether and when it applies, so a bracket later in the season may read 2 pounds higher than this. Read off docs.google.com on 2026-09-22. The weight classes page puts this beside the NCAA, NAIA and international weights.

Growth allowance

The NFHS book says a growth allowance of 2 pounds "may be added to each weight class any time after the date of certification" (4-4-4). The NIAA decides whether and when it applies.

The NIAA sets when it applies; see its rules at niaa.com, or ask your coach for the season bulletin.

Consecutive-day allowance

On consecutive days of team competition, the NFHS book grants every wrestler 1 pound a day, up to 2 pounds, when the opponent has been given at least 48 hours' notice (4-5-5). The NIAA decides whether and when it applies and can add conditions of its own; what its documents say is below.

We have not yet read the NIAA weigh-in rules. Ask your coach for the season bulletin.

If she weighs in above her plan

We have not yet read the NIAA weigh-in rules. Ask your coach for the season bulletin.

What to do if your school has no girls' team

We found no published NIAA rule covering a girl whose school has no girls' team. That is not the same as a ban: ask the school and the association.

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 NIAA 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 Nevada 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 Nevada wrestler goes from here.

College in the state

No college in Nevada sponsors women's wrestling yet. The national directory runs to hundreds of programs and grows every season.

Wrestlers from Nevada

4 women in the record we keep grew up here. Their careers started in a room like the one down the road.

The Nevada wrestlers

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, and when wrestling season starts has the year month by month and the first practice dates we have read off the associations' own pages.

This page was read on 2026-09-03, off NIAA's own pages and the NFHS participation survey, and parts of it were re-read since, most recently on 2026-10-18. 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.

Cite this data

Checked 2026-10-18

Women's Wrestling Club, "Nevada girls HS wrestling", https://womenswrestlingclub.com/high-school/nv, checked 2026-10-18.

Linking to it? The HTML:

<a href="https://womenswrestlingclub.com/high-school/nv">Nevada girls HS wrestling</a>

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