Girls etching their place in wrestling

Girl wrestlers are etching out their own corner in the sport.

Literally, a corner in the Jay County High School wrestling room is now dedicated to the five Patriots who have placed at state since the Indiana High School Girls Wrestling tournament was established in 2017.

JCHS returns two —  Lizzie Dollar and Lita Chowning — who already have their names in that corner. They’re looking to become the first state champions in the school’s wrestling program in more than 30 years.

“We’re hoping it’s growing,” said JCHS head coach Eric Myers. “I think it’s great for the girls.”

JCHS girl wrestlers — nine in total, with five first-timers — make up about a fifth of the entire wrestling roster. But when they get on the mat, it’s less about their gender and more about beating whoever is in front of them — boy or girl.

“Dominate everyone,” Dollar said. 

Dollar, a 98-pound junior, made it clear when asked what her goal is in her third year on the high school mat. She’s been the second-best Hoosier wrestler in her weight class since her freshman year, earning runner-up honors in the past two IHSGW state tournaments.

Chowning, a 120-pound senior, is wrestling in a new weight class after placing eighth and seventh the past two years at IHSGW state, respectively, as a 113-pounder and earning third place honors in the 98-pound division as a freshman.

She’s the oldest of three Chowning girls, all of whom wrestle. JCHS has a pipeline with girls getting on the mat starting at the grade school level.

Chowning said it’s her responsibility to teach her sisters how to wrestle and they practice whenever they can.

After school, the JCHS wrestlers start grappling with each other as soon as possible, before practice even starts.

It can be a daunting task for first-time girl wrestlers to go up against experienced boys, Myers said, but ultimately he leaves it up to them on whether they want to wrestle just girls or wrestle anybody in their weight class.

JCHS wrestlers participate in co-ed tournaments with boys, often competing against girls in addition to the newly established all-girl multi-team meets, Myers said.

He added it may soon be feasible for Indiana high schools to have a big enough roster of girl wrestlers to have dual meets in which one team competes against another with a full roster of girls.

The sport has had a few girls compete with the boys over the past few decades but having a full roster of girls competing in their own division is new to Indiana. It is becoming one of the fastest growing sports for girls in the country, accelerated in part by it becoming an Olympic sport in 2004.

Twenty-nine states’ athletic associates have recognized girls wrestling as a statewide sport and added official statewide tournaments or brackets to their existing state wrestling tournaments.

Indiana and Ohio’s high school athletic associations have yet to recognize girls wrestling as a separate sport or add statewide tournaments, though they allow girls to compete in statewide wrestling events typically dominated by boys.

Kayla Miracle of Culver Girls Academy made history in 2012 when she became the first girl to compete in the Indiana High School Athletic Association’s state wrestling tournament.

“No other sport do you really do that,” Myers said, noting the uniqueness of the sport allowing girls to wrestle boys.

Wrestling is one of two sports along with football in which any girl from any high school can compete in IHSAA tournaments. All other sports are separated by gender, meaning girls can only compete on the boys team if they don’t have a girls team at their high school.

Myers said their program often has more girls competing against boys than any other school they face, with Chowning, Dollar and senior Maddy Rinker (113) all with experience in co-ed matches.

Rinker said her goal is to compete at the girls state tournament this year for the first time.

She started her involvement with wrestling as a manager. That didn’t last long.

After a few days she said she saw what the boys were doing and thought, “I can do that” and was soon on the mat with everyone else.

“I wanted to show up the boys,” Rinker said.

Recruiting often comes through word-of-mouth or siblings. Dollar, for example, has a freshman brother, Caleb (120), who also wrestles.  

Myers noted there aren’t as many winter sports options for girls — basketball, swimming and gymnastics are the others — so wrestling is often a good fit for an athlete who wants to take up another sport.

Rinker, for example, is a cheerleader and was set to play softball this year for the Patriots before its season was canceled during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she was able to recruit one of her softball teammates to join the wrestling team.

Myers said the program has a few more girls and boys wrestling than previous years. In a peak weekend, the program sends out three buses — one to a boys varsity meet, one for the junior varsity boys team and one for the girls meet.

“That stretches us thin but I’m really happy to give as many opportunities (to wrestle) as possible,” Myers said.

The girls had a meet scheduled for last week at Decatur Central that was canceled. They have two all-girl, multi-team meets in December. The first will be Dec. 5 at Maconoquah in Bunker Hill — just north of Kokomo and east of U.S. 31 — and Dec. 12 at Penn, a powerhouse in girls wrestling according to Myers, in Mishawaka.

JCHS has sent competitors to IHSGW’s state tournament every year of its existence and it’ll look to do the same starting at regional at Maconoquah Jan. 8. The state meet is scheduled for a week later at Kokomo’s historic Memorial Gymnasium.