Girls wrestling moving closer and closer to PIAA-sanctioned status

By: Chris Harlan
Saturday, December 18, 2021 | 11:01 AM

When coach Dan Heckert started a girls wrestling program a year ago at North Allegheny, he hoped someday the sport might become sanctioned by the PIAA and have teams at schools across the WPIAL.

That idea just took a step closer to reality.

The PIAA earlier this year created a process for nonsanctioned sports to earn sanctioned status, eventually having PIAA championships and all that goes with it. The PIAA named the process the “Emerging Sport Program.”

Girls wrestling advocates quickly applied after reaching the 25-school minimum, and the PIAA board voted unanimously Dec. 8 to approve their application on a first-reading basis.

“It’s huge,” said Heckert, a member of the advocacy group Pennsylvania Girls Wrestling Task Force/SanctionPA. “It’s huge because it finally puts validity to what we’ve been doing since March of 2020. This isn’t a pipe dream. This isn’t something we just wish will happen. It is happening.”

Much work remains to be done, but this opens the door.

Before girls wrestling becomes a PIAA-sanctioned sport, the board must approve the group’s application on a second and third reading. The third vote could come as soon as February. However, after that, before the PIAA will organize a state tournament, the sport needs teams at 100 schools.

Right now, the group counts 29, including first-year teams at Connellsville and Canon-McMillan. Nearby District 6 has teams at Bald Eagle Area and Central Mountain, and the other teams are largely in Eastern Pennsylvania.

But now that the PIAA at least tentatively has endorsed girls wrestling, Heckert is optimistic more WPIAL schools will form a team.

“Are schools going to jump on board and be part of the movement, or are they going to wait?” he said. “We were isolated last year. There was no one around us. I think one of the big things schools are asking is: How does this work? How do you get girls matches?”

The more teams that form, the easier it becomes to answer that question.

Heckert said his girls all wrestled at least 10 matches last season, a number that could increase to upwards of 30 this winter.

North Allegheny has six girls on this year’s roster: senior Taylor Stover, junior Hannah Williams, sophomores Audrey Morrison and Leyna Rumpler and freshmen Brenna Collesy and Kaylee Dear. All six were newcomers to the sport in the past two years, Heckert said, proving a desire among girls for a girls-only format.

Currently, girls at schools without a girls team wrestle with the boys. North Allegheny had a female wrestler, Massima Curry, who was starting for the boys team a couple of years ago.

“I was seeing first-hand how tough it was,” said Heckert, an assistant coach on the boys team.

In 2019, with Heckert’s help, Curry entered the girls state tournament and placed seventh.

The North Allegheny girls started this season Dec. 19 at the Queen of the Mountain tournament at Central Mountain. Two days later, the squad had a team match at Canon-McMillan, and then returns there Dec. 28 for the Powerade Girls Tournament.

The schedule continues until mid-March, when Central Dauphin hosts a state championship meet, now not overseen by the PIAA.

This year for the first time, North Allegheny will host a Western Pennsylvania Championship on Feb. 5 for girls from the WPIAL and City League.

“I think that’s going to really open some people’s eyes,” Heckert said. “While, yes, we are behind numbers-wise compared to the eastern and central parts of the state, we still have a pretty decent number of girls. We’re over 50 girls in the WPIAL, when you combine the three teams that have formed and everybody else who has a girl here or there. And the City League has 10 girls.”

In their Emerging Sport application to the PIAA, the advocates described girls wrestling as the fastest-growing sport in the country. According to the group’s statistics, more than 32,000 girls participated in high school wrestling in 2020-21, a number that has increased 25 consecutive years.

“The numbers are going up significantly,” said North Allegheny athletic director Bob Bozzuto, a member of the PIAA board. “It’s growing in leaps and bounds. We’re very, very happy that we’re one of the pioneers in doing this.”

Thirty-two state high school associations have already sanctioned girls wrestling and hold a state championship for girls. That number has doubled in the past three years, according to the advocates.

Now that Pennsylvania seems likely to join that list, Heckert is ready to start counting to 100 schools. The state had no girls wrestling teams in March 2020, he noted, so they should be able to reach 100 rather quickly,

“We’ve seen some pretty substantial growth in just the past couple of years,” he said. “And it keeps growing.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

Tags: North Allegheny