High school · Vermont
Vermont high school girls' wrestling
VPA runs no girls' state wrestling championship in Vermont. 30 girls wrestled here in 2025-26, at 15 schools.
By Joe Spisak, Pennsylvania state champion and 4x NCAA qualifier at Virginia · Published September 3, 2026
The association
Not sanctioned
- Association
- VPA
- Girls' championship
- No
- Format
- No girls' championship
What Vermont has instead
Vermont runs one wrestling state championship, wrestled in the NFHS boys weight classes, and girls compete in it against boys. There is no VPA girls division and no VPA girls state championship. A Vermont Girls New England Qualifier is run separately, outside the VPA, to send Vermont girls to the New England championship. Weight classes re-read 2026-09-20: Two searches surfaced no VPA girls division, girls weight list or 2026-27 wrestling document; the VPA wrestling page timed out in Firecrawl and its skin issues page sits under a trashed path. Nothing found contradicts the row: one coed championship, no girls set. Weight classes re-read 2026-09-22: no VPA document names a girls set. The Caledonian-Record reports that the VPA's 2026-27 update to member schools introduces a stand-alone girls wrestling option as a step toward sanctioning girls wrestling as its own sport; no VPA document for that option was found. Rules re-read 2026-09-29 from the VPA's 2026-2027 Wrestling Rules and Regulations, the Google document vpaonline.org/winter-sports links as its Wrestling Guide: it still prints 12 percent as the girls' minimum body fat, where NFHS Rule 1-5 now sets 19. Its growth allowance condition is quoted under Growth allowance below. The CIAC's 2025-26 information packet says the other New England states adopted its 13 girls' classes; these VPA rules print no girls' classes at all.
How many girls wrestle in Vermont
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 17 more girls than 2024-25, up 130.8 percent.
Weight classes
Vermont has no girls' championship, so VPA publishes no girls' weight classes.
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.
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 VPA decides whether and when it applies.
“Beginning December 25, 2026, providing a wrestler has made two scratch weigh-ins, a 2 lb growth allowance shall be added to each weight class.”
From docs.google.com, the 2026-27 document, read 2026-09-29.
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 VPA decides whether and when it applies and can add conditions of its own; what its documents say is below.
The VPA documents we read on 2026-09-29 state no such rule. Ask your coach for the season bulletin.
If she weighs in above her plan
The VPA documents we read on 2026-09-29 state no such rule. Ask your coach for the season bulletin.
What to do if your school has no girls' team
We found no published VPA 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 VPA 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 Vermont 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 Vermont wrestler goes from here.
College in the state
One college here sponsors women's wrestling, from the directory built off each school's own athletics staff page.
- NorwichNCAA D3
Wrestlers from Vermont
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, 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 VPA's own pages and the NFHS participation survey, and parts of it were re-read since, most recently on 2026-09-29. 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.
In the VPA 2026-2027 Wrestling Rules and Regulations, the girls' floor still reads 12 percent. The NFHS raised it to 19 for 2026-27 (Rules 1-5-1, 1-5-2), and this site and the app compute 19. The same rules send readers to NFHS Rule 1, Section 5 for the program's requirements, and set out the VPA's own formula, naming no NWCA Optimal Performance Calculator: a urine specific gravity test the coach runs, then skinfolds or a body fat scale, with a body fat factor of "the percentage of body fat over 7% for males and 12% for females". The two documents disagree, and we found no VPA statement saying which floor Vermont applies in 2026-27. Ask your coach or the VPA before she certifies.
“The minimum body fat should not be lower than 7 percent for males and not lower than 12 percent for females.”
From docs.google.com, the 2026-27 document, read 2026-09-29.
Cite this data
Checked
Women's Wrestling Club, "Vermont girls HS wrestling", https://womenswrestlingclub.com/high-school/vt, checked 2026-09-29.
Linking to it? The HTML:
<a href="https://womenswrestlingclub.com/high-school/vt">Vermont girls HS wrestling</a>The newsletter
One email, sent when something is worth your time.
Get the free Girls' Wrestling College Recruiting Guide, plus athlete stories, results and the rules, all checked against the source. No filler, unsubscribe any time.