NCHSAA is quoted as saying.......

[Longdayrunner]

Inside the Huddle: Girls wrestling continues to grow

David Thompson, Asheville Citizen TimesPublished 11:31 a.m. ET Feb. 11, 2020

https://www.citizen-times.com/story/nletter/highschool-huddle/2020/02/11/inside-huddle-girls-wrestling-continues-grow/4712552002/

Que Tucker is quoted by the Asheville Citizens Times as saying:

"It was a wonderful and successful event," NCHSAA commissioner Que Tucker told the Citizen Times. "It's amazing to see the increase in numbers, and that was the intent. We ran into facility issues, but that's almost a good problem to have. It shows how fast this thing is growing."

Tucker said the state has immediate plans to continue the invitational and to search for a larger location next year. The question, however, is what's the next big step for this rapidly growing sport?

There's still a long way to go before girls wrestling can be sanctioned as its own sport. According to Tucker, the state bylaws say that 75% of the 418 member schools must offer the sport or at least half of each of the state's four classifications (1A, 2A, etc.).

Tucker said she plans to send a survey to the member schools to find out how many girls wrestling teams there are in the state.

My thoughts after reading the above:

After watching three Wrestling Regional Tournaments this past weekend, I wonder how long would it take for a 75% or 50% rule would come to forwishen. Girls have been getting pummeled since the late 90's in North Carolina by male wrestlers.  By my math; that is over twenty plus years.  By my count, only 82% of NCHSAA member schools offer wrestling for the boys.  So the NCHSAA is asking for basically the same member schools to offer girls wrestling.  The 50% rule would require around 171 members schools to offer girls wrestling. 

And does offer mean field a team of fourteen weights or just one girl competing individually?  This year there were many high schools that had girls on the wrestling team but were not sponsored by their school to compete in the NCWA Wrestling Invitational.  Just ask around.

Other state association have sponsored a Girls' Individual State Wrestling Championship with total number of girls wrestling throughout their state at around 300.  So by the statements above from the NCHSAA, they will require somewhere around 2394 to 3601 girls wrestling before they consider sponsoring Girls' Wrestling.

I guess no one in Chapel Hill has seen the Kevin Costner movie "Field of Dreams".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SB16il97yw

Sponsor the sport for Girls and they will come; just like when NCHSAA went to the classification system for wrestling in the late 80's and there was the growth of wrestling with the smaller schools.

[kwatkins]

My understanding is for a school to considered as having a separate women's wrestling team, they must put the girls on a separate eligibility sheet. Until women's wrestling becomes a sanctioned sport, the girls can be put on both eligibility sheets.Once the women get their own division, they can only be on the women's eligibility sheet. I think clarification on this would be a great thing for our coaches association to clarify for us at the coaches clinic.

[Ironman152]

Girls at Lumberton are not going to come out until their is an official "girls team".  We don't have the ability to set our schedule around a girls team like other programs have been able to.  And it will be very rare that a girl makes it into our lineup as a first year wrestler.  But if girls wrestling gets sanctioned and it is able to have a paid coaching position and its own budget its much more likely to develop.