High school · Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania high school girls' wrestling
PIAA has crowned girls' state champions in Pennsylvania since 2024. 3,080 girls wrestled here in 2025-26, at 271 schools.
By Joe Spisak, Pennsylvania state champion and 4x NCAA qualifier at Virginia · Published September 3, 2026
The association
Sanctioned
- Association
- PIAA
- Girls' championship
- Yes, first held in 2024
- Format
- Girls' divisions inside the state wrestling championships
- Source
- piaa.org, read 2026-09-03
What the record shows
The PIAA girls past champions record starts at 2024, the first championship, held March 7 to 9, 2024 at the Giant Center in Hershey. It lists identical weights for 2024, 2025 and 2026 that match the NFHS 13 class set. The PIAA does operate cooperative sponsorship, but no PIAA document was found stating what it provides for a girl at a school with no girls program.
The 2026-27 Pennsylvania championship carries the dates, the venue, and the qualifying path.
How many girls wrestle in Pennsylvania
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 570 more girls than 2024-25, up 22.7 percent.
Weight classes
PIAA uses the NFHS 13 class girls' set. The NFHS offers three, and a state association picks one and cannot switch mid-season.
- 100
- 106
- 112
- 118
- 124
- 130
- 136
- 142
- 148
- 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 piaa.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 PIAA 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 PIAA 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 Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania wrestler goes from here.
College in the state
25 colleges here sponsor women's wrestling, from the directory built off each school's own athletics staff page.
- LehighNCAA D1
- MercyhurstNCAA D1
- East StroudsburgNCAA D2
- EdinboroNCAA D2
- GannonNCAA D2
- Lock HavenNCAA D2
- Pitt-JohnstownNCAA D2
- Point ParkNCAA D2
and 17 more
Wrestlers from Pennsylvania
2 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 PIAA'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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