Girls wrestling is included in many different atmospheres such as the Olympics, colleges and now in high schools. Girls were never pushed away from wrestling but now there will be more opportunities for girls to compete. 

Girls teams will have chances to compete in their own tournaments. While the concept is still new, it is not certain how many tournaments there will be. However, because of this, girls would then be able to go to the boys tournaments to make them coed.

“If it’s a weekend and there’s no girls tournament, they will travel with the guys and wrestling guys tournament. If there’s an availability of a girls tournament that weekend, we will take them to the girls tournament,” wrestling coach Tommy Edgmon said. “Being it’s such a new thing to Kansas not every weekend is a girls tournament. So sometimes we’ll just have to wrestle in a boys tournament which is fine this what they’ve been doing, but as it’s more popular and growing, you do have girls tournaments on the weekends.”

A lot of things will be similar between the girls and boys wrestling teams, although some things will be modified. Practices and conditioning will stay consistent, but things such as girls uniforms will be changed.

“We would probably add a shirt and a short bottom something they may feel more comfortable with,” Edgmon said. 

Wrestling along with all sports is very competitive. Freshman Elia Bergquist wants to take this opportunity to challenge herself and learn a new skill. Knowing that she will have to wrestle not only girls and get to a certain weight class does not stop her and has set goals to help her along the way. 

“I know I won’t be good the first year because it’s a new thing, and I’ve never done it before. But hopefully I will be able to win a match by the end of the season,” Bergquist said. 

This new opportunity is exciting for many people including the coaches and athletes. Edgmon hopes for around ten or more girls to come out and compete this year. He does not think that there will be much change or differences with adding girls to it, just more fun and opportunities for the season. 

“Guys compete all the time, it is just adding a female sport to it. So outside of the gender I don’t think there should be anything really different,” Edgmon said.