The history of women's wrestling

Before there was anywhere to wrestle

1972 to 1988. No girls' division, no women's championship, and in most places no rule that let a girl on the mat at all.

1. 1972

   Title IX becomes law on June 23. Wrestling for girls and women was not yet a reality anywhere in the country, and the law changed the sport only years later.

2. 1975

   A federal court ruling on June 19 lets a nine-year-old from Ann Arbor into an AAU tournament. She won her first two matches 18-0 and 9-0 and grew up to be Tricia Saunders.

3. 1987

   The first Women's World Championships are held at Lorenskog, Norway, the same year the men wrestle theirs at Clermont-Ferrand, France. The United States does not enter.

4. 1988

   Sheila Wager works the Seoul Olympics, the first American woman to referee wrestling at a Games. She officiated Barcelona in 1992 as well.

A World Championship to aim at

1989 to 2003. USA Wrestling starts a women's program, and a World team is the highest a woman can go.

1. 1989

   USA Wrestling sends its first women's World team, to Martigny, Switzerland, and starts its women's program. The team wins three medals: bronze for Afsoon Roshanzamir at 47 kg, the program's first, and silvers for Asia de Weese at 50 kg and Leia Kawaii at 70 kg.

2. 1990

   The NFHS counts high school girls in wrestling for the first time and reports 112 girls at 101 schools, every one of them a member of her school's boys' team. The first U.S. Senior Women's World Team Trials are held at Vallejo, California.

3. 1992

   Tricia Saunders wins the 50 kg title at Villeurbanne, France, the first American woman to win a senior World championship. Her four World titles stood as the American record for 27 years.

4. 1993

   The University of Minnesota-Morris creates the first varsity women's wrestling team at a college, competing from the 1993-94 season.

5. 1997

   Kent Bailo founds the U.S. Girls Wrestling Association, which ran all-girl folkstyle national tournaments and the state and regional events that fed them for over two decades.

6. 1998

   Hawaii holds the first official girls' state high school championship in the country. Clarissa Chun of Roosevelt High School in Honolulu wins the 98-pound final, the first girls' state final ever wrestled, and repeats as a senior.

7. 1999

   Texas becomes the second state with a girls' championship: the UIL's wrestling archive begins with the 1998-99 season, and its girls' state results start in that same first year. At Boden, Sweden, the United States wins the women's World team title for the first time, beating Japan by a point with all six Americans in the top six.

8. 2002

   The International Olympic Committee adds women's wrestling to the Olympic program, starting at Athens in 2004. USA Wrestling hires Terry Steiner as its first National Women's Coach. Fargo runs a girls' division at the Junior Nationals for the first time and Rachael Holthaus of Minnesota wins the lightest weight, 95 pounds.

9. 2003

   Women wrestle the Pan American Games for the first time and the United States sweeps all four golds, through Patricia Miranda, Tina George, Sara McMann and Toccara Montgomery.

The Olympic era

2004 to 2016. Four weight classes at the Games, a college championship of its own, and the first American gold.

1. 2004

   The first United States Olympic team in women's freestyle is picked in Indianapolis: Patricia Miranda at 48 kg, Tela O'Donnell at 55 kg, Sara McMann at 63 kg and Toccara Montgomery at 72 kg. At Athens, Miranda wins bronze, the first Olympic wrestling medal by an American woman, and McMann wins silver, the first American woman in an Olympic final. Missouri Valley College hosts the first women's college national championships that spring.

2. 2005

   USA Wrestling and Northern Michigan University open a women's program at the U.S. Olympic Education Center. Ali Bernard becomes the first American woman with two Junior World titles, at 67 kg in 2003 and 72 kg in 2005.

3. 2006

   Michaela Hutchison of Skyline High School wins Alaska's 103-pound title on February 5, the first girl in the country to win an all-boys state championship. Later that year Tricia Saunders becomes the first woman inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as a Distinguished Member.

4. 2008

   The Women's Collegiate Wrestling Association is formed and holds its first championship at Oklahoma City University, won as a team by the University of the Cumberlands. USA Wrestling starts the Girls Folkstyle Nationals. At Beijing, Randi Miller wins bronze at 63 kg, and in October Clarissa Chun wins the World title at 48 kg in Tokyo.

5. 2010

   Two Olympians become the first women to head a women's college wrestling team: Toccara Montgomery at Lindenwood, then Marcie Van Dusen at Menlo College.

6. 2012

   Clarissa Chun wins bronze at 48 kg in London. Oklahoma City University becomes the first program to win four straight college national titles.

7. 2014

   Victoria Anthony wins a fourth WCWA title at 109 pounds, the first four-time college national champion in the sport. Later the same night her Simon Fraser teammate Helen Maroulis becomes the second, at 130 pounds.

8. 2016

   Helen Maroulis beats three-time Olympic champion Saori Yoshida of Japan 4-1 in the Rio final at 53 kg, the first Olympic wrestling gold by an American woman.

9. 2017

   Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina becomes the first NCAA Division I school to add a women's wrestling team.

Into the NCAA

2019 to 2026. Three World golds in a year, four Olympic medals in a Games, and a college championship with the NCAA's name on it.

1. 2019

   At Nur-Sultan the United States wins three women's World golds in one championship for the first time, through Jacarra Winchester at 55 kg, Tamyra Mensah-Stock at 68 kg and Adeline Gray at 76 kg. The NAIA holds its first Women's Wrestling National Invitational, won by Menlo College, and the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics recommends women's wrestling for Emerging Sport status.

2. 2020

   All three NCAA divisions approve women's wrestling as an Emerging Sport. The National Collegiate Women's Wrestling Championships are created for NCAA programs in all three divisions, with the first one at Adrian College in Michigan and McKendree University the first team champion. The WCWA holds its final championship. In February, Heaven Fitch wins North Carolina's 1A title at 106 pounds, the first girl to win a boys' state championship in that state.

3. 2021

   At the Tokyo Games, held in 2021, Tamyra Mensah-Stock wins the 68 kg gold and becomes the first African-American woman to win an Olympic wrestling title. Adeline Gray takes silver at 76 kg, Helen Maroulis and Sarah Hildebrandt take bronze, and four medals in a Games doubles the country's previous best. Gray wins a sixth World title at Oslo, the most by any American wrestler. Iowa announces a women's varsity program for 2023-24, the first from a Power 5 conference, with Clarissa Chun as its first head coach.

4. 2022

   Tennessee holds the first girls' state dual meet championship, won by Rossview High School. The NAIA grants women's wrestling full championship status, starting with the 2023 competition, the first college multi-sport body to do it.

5. 2023

   The NAIA crowns its first sanctioned national champions, with Southern Oregon the team winner. Iowa wrestles its first varsity season, 2023-24, and takes the NCWWC team title out of it in March 2024, with Ava Bayless the champion at 109 pounds.

6. 2024

   At Paris the United States wins four women's medals again: gold for Sarah Hildebrandt at 50 kg and Amit Elor at 68 kg, silver for Kennedy Blades at 76 kg, and a third career bronze for Helen Maroulis at 57 kg, which made her the first American woman with three Olympic wrestling medals.

7. 2025

   On January 17 the NCAA adds women's wrestling as its 91st championship, five years after the sport entered the Emerging Sports for Women program. NCAA schools sponsoring it had gone from 76 in 2023-24 to 95 in 2024-25, with more than 1,700 wrestlers.

8. 2026

   The first NCAA women's wrestling championship is wrestled on March 6 and 7 at Xtream Arena in Coralville, Iowa: 180 qualifiers out of six regionals, ten weight classes, and Divisions I, II and III in one bracket. McKendree wins the team title 171 to 166 over Iowa. Among the first champions are Audrey Jimenez at 110 pounds, Bella Mir at 145, Kennedy Blades at 160 and Kylie Welker at 180.

How many girls wrestle

The NFHS has surveyed high school participation since 1971 and counted girls in wrestling since 1990. Its own figures, by school year.

The jump from 2024-25 to 2025-26 is 19.9 percent, the second largest of any girls' high school sport that year behind flag football. The 1990 figure counted girls who were members of their school's boys' team, because there was nothing else to be a member of.

How many states run a championship

Two counts, and they do not match. The NFHS survey published in August 2026 says 40 state associations conduct a girls' wrestling state championship, and that every state now reports some girls' participation. This site's own collection, read off each association's page for the 2026-27 season, found a girls' state championship series in 49 jurisdictions.

The two counts are gathered differently and neither is presented here as the correction of the other. One distinction worth knowing as a wrestler: of the 49 individual state championships in this site's data, 14 are a girls' championship run as its own event and 35 are girls' brackets wrestled inside the association's state championships. Every one of them is on the calendar, with the association page each date came from.

Sources

• nwhof.org · National Wrestling Hall of Fame, 50 U.S. women's wrestling milestones, by Gary Abbott of USA Wrestling: the spine of this timeline from 1988 to 2022
• olympedia.org · United World Wrestling: women first wrestled the World Championships in 1987 at Lorenskog
• themat.com · Hawaii's 1998 first sanctioned girls' state tournament and its first champion
• uiltexas.org · the UIL wrestling archive, whose girls' state results begin with the 1998-99 season
• themat.com · the four U.S. women's medals at Paris 2024 and Maroulis becoming the first with three
• themat.com · Randi Miller's 2008 Olympic bronze at 63 kg
• ncaa.org · Emerging Sport in 2020, the 91st championship in January 2025, the 2026 field and format, and the school and athlete counts
• ncaa.com · McKendree 171, Iowa 166 at the first NCAA championship
• flowrestling.org · Kyle Klingman, March 24, 2026: the college championship lineage, the WCWA's final year, and every team champion since 2004
• nfhs.org · NFHS participation survey, Aug. 27, 2026: 88,771 girls at 8,853 schools in 2025-26, up from 74,064, and 40 state associations conducting championships
• a-us.storyblok.com · NFHS 2025-26 High School Athletics Participation Survey (PDF, read with pdftotext): the national summary row Wrestling (51/51) gives 8,853 girls' schools and 88,771 girls
• a-us.storyblok.com · NFHS 2024-25 High School Athletics Participation Survey (PDF, read with pdftotext): the national summary row Wrestling (51/50) gives 8,100 girls' schools and 74,064 girls