High school · Ohio
Ohio high school girls' wrestling
OHSAA has crowned girls' state champions in Ohio since 2023. 3,290 girls wrestled here in 2025-26, at 525 schools.
By Joe Spisak, Pennsylvania state champion and 4x NCAA qualifier at Virginia · Published September 3, 2026
The association
Sanctioned
- Association
- OHSAA
- Girls' championship
- Yes, first held in 2023
- Format
- Girls' divisions inside the state wrestling championships
- Source
- ohsaa.org, read 2026-09-03
What the record shows
The January 2022 sanctioning and the first tournament are a year apart: the inaugural OHSAA girls state tournament was March 10 to 12, 2023 at the Schottenstein Center, with more than 220 wrestlers from 136 schools. Girls compete in a single classification, unlike the three boys divisions.
The 2026-27 Ohio championship carries the dates, the venue, and the qualifying path.
How many girls wrestle in Ohio
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 755 more girls than 2024-25, up 29.8 percent.
Weight classes
OHSAA 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 ohsaaweb.blob.core.windows.net 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
OHSAA publishes a rule for this. The OHSAA lets a girl wrestle only boys events all regular season and still enter the OHSAA girls state tournament, as long as her school has registered for the girls tournament through its association account. A girl may enter only one of the two state tournaments, girls or boys, never both.
From ohsaaweb.blob.core.windows.net, 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 OHSAA 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 Ohio 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 Ohio wrestler goes from here.
College in the state
11 colleges here sponsor women's wrestling, from the directory built off each school's own athletics staff page.
- TiffinNCAA D2
- Baldwin WallaceNCAA D3
- HeidelbergNCAA D3
- HiramNCAA D3
- John CarrollNCAA D3
- Mount St. JosephNCAA D3
- Mount UnionNCAA D3
- OtterbeinNCAA D3
and 3 more
Wrestlers from Ohio
One woman 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 OHSAA'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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