Eudora puts brakes on fast-growing sport of girls wrestling. The team is pushing back.
Girls high school wrestling is a growing sport, locally and nationally.
In 2019, the Kansas State High School Activities Association voted to sanction girls wrestling as a high school sport in Kansas.
Nationwide, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame says girls high school wrestling participation has grown for 27 straight years.
Another governing body in the sport, the National Wrestling Coaches Association that has helped many girls wrestling teams get off the ground, says the number of girls wrestling in high school grew from 804 to over 28,000 between 1994 and 2021.
In Eudora, the girls wanted their own wrestling team.
Girls wrestling in Eudora began with Maddy Born in 2019
In 2019, Maddy Born, then a sophomore, finished the season as the first girls wrestler under the umbrella of the Eudora wrestling team.
That number grew to four the next year and 14 this past year.
The girls have practiced at the same time and room as the boys, shared transportation and attended tournaments, some with the boys and some without.
Wrestlers Maddy Arnold, Jordan Dempsey and Kayleigh Miller reached out to Carl Springer after the past season. They asked Springer, an assistant coach for the boys and de facto head coach for the girls, about getting their own team.
"This year, there were 13 varsity boys and they got their own practice — while there were 14 girls and they had to practice in a room with the JV boys," said Springer. "When (the girls) traveled, they traveled a lot with the JV team.
"So they were kind of treated like a JV boys team, where varsity got the head coach and always had the main staff, and they felt like they got the leftovers.
"They said, 'We don't want that, we want our own team, coaching staff and practice times and a strength and conditioning program that's geared towards girls.'"
The girls met with Eudora superintendent Stu Moeckel and athletic director Cara Kimberlin.
"We walked them through our policies for starting new programs, which has been a board policy for several years," said Moeckel. "That policy has been used for starting our girls soccer team and our boys and girls golf teams.
"Part of that initial movement into club status has to be fully funded by members of that program for the first several years to show that there's a commitment and interest and then later on it moves to district funded."
The team would need to be club status first and funding the team on their own at 100% of the cost for two years, 75% in year three and 50% in year four. They would be fully funded by the district in the fifth year.
The girls' proposal was submitted for the May 12 school board meeting.
"(The girls) did all the research," said Springer. "They did cost analysis on uniforms, coaches, travel on buses, meals, hotels, tournament entry fees, everything. It was about $12,000 a year, and they said, 'OK, we can raise that,'
"They had a bunch of donors lined up and a bunch of fundraisers lined up."
At the June school board meeting, Moeckel presented three options: hire a girls head coach, hire an assistant to oversee the boys and girls teams, or the girls team could self-fund. No decision was made.
At the July meeting, Moeckel recommended and the board approved hiring an assistant to oversee the boys and girls programs.
"We are trying to grow the girls team," said Amber Jenkins, Jordan Dempsey's mother, on her reaction to the July ruling. "Girls wrestling is a huge sport, making headway all across the United States.
"I just don't understand why the school board is so adamant about not helping to expand this program. I don't understand the opposition that we're getting."
Moeckel pointed to confusion. If the girls could already wrestle, what did they need the school board to do? He said the girls team will attend all girls tournaments in the coming season.
"My recommendation to them was much like our track team," said Moeckel. "We have a head coach. Why wouldn't we have a head coach be in charge of both our boys and girls wrestling program, work with both programs and trust them to delegate assistants as needed to both those programs?"
The decision angered some parents.
"I was pissed," said Amber Arnold, Maddy Arnold's mother. "I watched my daughter's face. My daughter broke down crying. She felt defeated. That's not something you want to see on any kid's face. The girls that were there are defeated. Carl was defeated.
"There are two open board spots. I put my name in for a board spot. That's how upsetting this is."
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The Eudora girls want their own wrestling program
A military kid who moved back to Kansas in 2002, Springer has spent the majority of his time since as a fireman and paramedic in the Topeka and Lawrence area.
For the past six years, he's been a wrestling coach at The Farm, a youth wrestling club in Eudora. He was asked last year to be an assistant wrestling coach for the junior high and high school wrestling teams.
Springer's daughter, Hayleigh Wempe, wrestled boys her seventh- and eighth-grade year at Baldwin before being part of the first girls team when she got to high school.
Wempe was one of the building blocks of the Baldwin girls wrestling team and part of the team that won the 4-1A state championship in 2021. She died in April.
A former wrestler at The Farm, Wempe was a major reason Springer wanted to help build a girls team in Eudora.
"That was kind of my focus last season," said Springer. "Helping the girls build a real team of their own instead of just existing as part of the boys team for the last few years. Some of the girls knew that I was coming to coach. They knew who Hayleigh was having watched her wrestle for years, so they wanted to come try it.
"They placed in the top five in every tournament, including regionals, and sent four to state for the first time. They had a successful year but split coaches."
That first team dual win was against Washburn Rural, a standard bearer for girls wrestling in the state.
"It was unreal," said Springer. "I knew the team score. It wasn't posted. Reese Pattison was going out on the mat for the last match of the dual. She wins, we win the dual. She loses, we lose the dual, that simple.
"She ends up pinning the girl, jumps up and we're high fiving — and I turned and told the girls, 'Hey, you know you just won that dual.' They hadn't won a dual as a team ever and, holy crap, they freaked out."
Last year's head coach Jotham Andrews and Springer had a falling out, Springer said. That led to Springer acting as the de facto head coach of the girls.
This offseason, the wrestling program named a new head coach, and Springer was asked to resign his position.
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What are the Eudora girls wrestlers doing now?
Last week, Moeckel met with representatives of the girls team.
"I kind of explained to them, no matter what we do, we still only have one wrestling room," said Moeckel. "Practices are going to be at different times regardless, right? We have one wrestling room. The limits of space, whether we have two separate teams or, as the board decided, we have one large team, that isn't going to change our room."
Community members, including current girls wrestlers and their parents, say they will speak at Thursday's board meeting. Members of surrounding wrestling communities plan to be there in support.
Washburn Rural girls wrestling coach Damon Parker will be one of them.
Parker; his wife, Lindsay, an assistant coach for the girls program; and a Washburn Rural girls wrestler requested time to address the Eudora school board. They were denied, with the district limiting feedback to Eudora residents.
"I was just going to outline the enormous benefits that USD 437 has got, not just publicity, but in preparing our students for the future," said Parker. "We have girls that have entered our program as one person and the left as a completely different person, and a lot of that has to do with the lessons that they learned in our wrestling room."
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This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Eudora girls wrestlers push back against school board decision
