Proposal to add Female Wrestling as KSHSAA Activity

This document is a proposal for adding girls wrestling as a KSHSAA sanctioned sport for KSHSAA member schools. As with any sport, KSHSAA member schools would have the option to allow girls wrestling at their school.


Background:

Kansas has a long history of girls wrestling. Kansas has showed growth within the youth ranks of girls wrestling. Specifically USA Wrestling card membership and state tournament participation has grown each year after year for the past 5 years.

In addition to the youth ranks, Colleges across the US (including Kansas) continue to add women's’ wrestling programs and thus college scholarship opportunities for female Kansas wrestlers.

The Olympic committee has also added additional Women’s Wrestling weight classes to increase opportunities on the Olympic level.

All of these point to tremendous acceptance and growth in a sport that has historically been dominated by male participation. To allow Kansas girls interested in the sport of wrestling to better capitalize on the growing opportunities, it is our recommendation to add girls wrestling as a sanctioned KSHSAA sport.

111 females participated in the 2016 Kansas High School Wrestling season. Other states that have added girls wrestling as a sanctioned high school sport have seen tremendous increase in participation once girls have the opportunity to compete against girls.


Regular Season:

The women’s wrestling season would run parallel to the regular KSHSAA wrestling season. All current wrestling season rules and regulations would apply except for the weight classes as defined herein.
Weight Classes (11):
95, 102, 110, 119, 128, 138, 148, 165, 185, 215

These weight classes were modeled after the weights successfully used in Texas HS girls wrestling. The girls would follow the same weight certification & allows procedures required by the state.

Girls will not be allowed to compete in the boys weight classes unless the tournament does not recognize/have girls weight classes.


Duals and Tournaments:

The girls wrestling season would follow all the same competition points system currently in place with KSHSAA for wrestling. Dual and Tournament hosts would have the option to add a girls division with the girl’s weight classes to their current competition or host their own girl’s only competition.


Post Season:

The state tournament would be a single all-class (1A-6A) state tournament with no qualifier needed. This allows for KSHSAA and its member schools to monitor/increase participation. The top 6 placers in each of the weight classes

As the single tournament outgrows itself the following growth plan is available:
1) Single Class – Regional Qualifier: Add 4 regional qualifiers where the top 4 from each region advance to the single state tournament.
2) Multiple State Tournament (Classes divided) – this would be a single class tournament for each of the KSHAA recognized classes with no qualifier needed.
3) Multiple Class – Multiple Regional – This would be similar to the current wrestling season
The girls wrestling state tournament could be held in conjunction with one of the existing high school state tournaments.


Financial Impact:

By running boys and girls wrestling seasons at the same time, similar to track & field in the State of Kansas, the financial impact to schools that choose to participate would be minimal. Most schools would not need to increase their coaching staff or travel budgets, as many programs already have girls competing on their teams, this will just give them a platform to compete against like opponents. Increase in costs for hosting events with an added female division will also be minimal, and should require little effort to accommodate. There may be additional costs to KSHSAA when hosting post-season events, but those can even be scheduled to be competed at the same sites already used for wrestling post-season.


Testimonials:

“I want to emphasize the importance of sanctioning girl’s wrestling throughout the United States. It is imperative that girls wrestle against their own gender. We should not require young girls to test themselves against males in this sport in order to be a competitive wrestler or to be valued as a good wrestler. It is a tough and demanding sport as it is, and young girls deserve the right to compete with other tough female wrestlers. The longer we force girls to compete against boys, the more we prevent the growth of women’s wrestling.”
Katherine Fulp-Allen, 2015 World Team Trials runner-up at 53 kg.

“The opportunities to continue wrestling at the highest level for women and men are nearly equal. I think there are countless reasons to endorse women’s wrestling in high school. The real question is why not? Wrestling has taken me around the world and given me a real platform to be a role model and inspiration for athletes young and old. The people that wrestling has connected me to has made me better. Wrestling gave me a motivation to work hard at my jobs and build relationships with people around me. What wrestling did for me, what it should do for everyone, is make us better, more humble, more hardworking people. It has allowed me to be better in my character, my faith, and my discipline and in turn pass that along to the next generation of young ladies who want to pursue it.”
Kelsey Campbell, 2015 World Team Trials runner-up at 58 kg.

We need 24 schools to participate at the varsity level before the proposal will be considered.

To date, this proposal has only been discussed at our league level in the AVCTL.

Current schools with interest in adding girls wrestling at the varsity level.

1. McPherson
2. Clearwater
3. Derby

4. Garden Plain

Any updates???

Washburn Rural would be absolutely in favor and a huge proponent of adding girls' wrestling as a fall or spring sport. Unfortunately we simply do not have the facilities or human resources to facilitate adding girls' wrestling as a winter sport.

That would be the case for many programs. I think it needs to be a Fall sport so as not to interfere with FS/GR.

I would agree. My only reservation for it being a fall sport is you are going to lose a lot of the "crossover coaches" that coach both wrestling and football. If you did it in the spring you could potentially hold girls' tournaments in conjunction with freestyle tournaments. That being said, Fall would still be infinitely better than winter. I absolutely love the idea of adding girls' wrestling, and as the father of a female wrestler, I think it's long overdue. However, I think most schools will run into big-time issues with running it as a winter sport.

Are you saying you feel the girls would need a seperate coach than the boys? And with the added numbers your practice room to small? I am guessing the bus ride would be a problem as well. I guess I don't understand why the current boys coach would not coach the girls along with the boys.

All of the above.

If you had 8 or 9 more boys go out for wrestling what would you do? We're not talking about every girl in the school going out for wrestling.

Some teams would be forced to stagger practice times which would possibly have a negative effect on both programs.

I would be nice if they add girls wrestling to high school that it still be a winter sport so that the ones that want to play volleyball can still play both.

The proposal is to add girls wrestling as a winter sport. Each school would manager their team as they see fit. This season McPherson has added a girls wrestling team. We currently have 12 girls on the team. They practice the same time as the boys team, our practices are not gender specific. We simply have wrestling practice. The girls ride the bus to the events with the boys. We have seen no issues or concerns with meshing the two genders. This is exactly the same way our cross country, bowling, and track/field teams operate at McPherson.