Nevada high school sports just grew by one.
The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association voted unanimously Thursday to add a girls’ division to the state wrestling championships. The NIAA Board of Governors, made up of representatives from across the state, votes on all high school athletic activities.
The state wrestling championships are scheduled for February 10-11 in Winnemucca.
The North 5A Regional Tournament will be held February 3-4 at a location to be announced. The North 3A tournament will be held in Wooster on February 3rd-4th.
Reed wrestling coach Mike Klapp, who will oversee the Raiders girls’ wrestling team this year, said participation in girls’ wrestling nationwide is up 30 percent.
He expects similar growth in Nevada and said he already has about 30 girls interested in being on the Reed team this winter.
Klapp said an unusual argument made at Thursday’s NIAA Oversight Committee meeting in Las Vegas was that girls would no longer have the opportunity to wrestle boys.
“It was an interesting place,” said Klapp. “Girls want to wrestle with girls. Is it a violation of Title IX not to let girls wrestle boys? And I thought, ‘That’s a weird argument.’”
He said girls could still wrestle boys if they wanted to.
“I hope that’s not the take-home message. Girls now have a chance to wrestle with other girls,” he said.
Nevada wrestling coaches have held an all-girls wrestling state tournament for the past three seasons as part of the Clark County JV season-ending tournament in southern Nevada. But it has not been officially recognized by the NIAA.
There are 12 weight classes in girls wrestling in Nevada. Boys have 14 weight classes. Klapp said more weight classes could be added as attendance increases in Nevada.
He said that besides Reed, many other Northern Nevada schools have multiple girls on wrestling teams, including Spanish Springs, McQueen, South Tahoe, Carson, Fernley, Douglas, Battle Mountain, and White Pine.
“Everything indicates that the numbers are going to go through the roof now that we’re giving girls the chance to wrestle girls,” said Klapp.
He said there are about 30,000 girls nationwide who wrestle in high school.
“Every other sport since the pandemic has seen participation go down, but girls’ wrestling numbers are up 30 percent,” said Klapp. “The part about it that’s such a no-brainer is that we’ve already separated all the other sports. Girls don’t play golf against boys.”
He said that girls’ wrestling will continue to be held in conjunction with boys’ doubles matches for the next few years until girls’ participation increases. He said the Tournament of Champions and Sierra Nevada Classic, two major wrestling tournaments held in Reno in December, will have girls’ wrestling brackets.
Reed hosted the first all-girls wrestling tournament last winter, featuring girls from South Tahoe, McQueen and Spanish Springs, and Del Oro, California.
Women’s wrestling has been part of the Summer Olympics for about 20 years.
Colleges are also adding women’s wrestling, including Iowa, one of the nation’s preeminent wrestling programs, which features three women from Nevada.
The Olympics and college women’s wrestling features freestyle wrestling, which is more of an attacking style, while high school wrestling is folkstyle, which emphasizes opponent control on the mat.
Jim Krajewski covers high school and youth sports for the Reno Gazette Journal. Follow him on Twitter @RGJPreps. Support his work by subscribing to RGJ.com.
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