Historic Iowa high school girls wrestling season begins with 4-team dual meet in Grimes

GRIMES — Iowa high school girls wrestling is here, officially, at long last.

The 2022-23 high school girls wrestling season, the first to be officially recognized and offered by the Iowa High School Girls Athletic Union, began Monday night with the very first official competition, hosted by Dallas Center-Grimes.

“This has been a long time coming,” Erin Kirtley, the IGHSAU wrestling administrator, said in a pre-dual speech. “Really excited to watch everything that’s going to transpire this next season.”

With a few hundred people inside the main gym, DCG hosted Ankeny, Spencer and Waverly-Shell Rock in a four-team dual meet to formally kick off the season. Each team wrestled twice. The host Fillies went 2-0, beating Ankeny 48-27 and Spencer 45-36.

The first day of practice was Oct. 31. As of Tuesday, 1,823 Iowa girls are registered and eligible to wrestle this season, according to Trackwrestling. That would have ranked fourth nationally last year, according to stats from the National Federation of State High School Associations, trailing only California (5,578), Texas (4,836) and Missouri (1,897).

Another 300 Iowa girls are registered and expected to become eligible in the days ahead. More competitions are scheduled for this week and the next three months, culminating with the regional postseason tournaments in late January, which will serve as the qualifiers for the state championships on Feb. 2-3.

But Monday night was a small celebration for those who helped make this all possible — and many of them were in attendance to fully embrace the historic moment.

Kirtley, who helped push the girls wrestling movement over the finish line last January, sat front and center to take in the action. She and other members of the IGHSAU, including executive director Jean Berger, were in attendance.

Charlotte Bailey, Iowa USA Wrestling’s Women’s Director who has led Iowa’s girls wrestling movement for years, drove in from Iowa City to watch. Bailey helped spur the rapid growth by convincing Independence and Ogden to add girls divisions to their already-established tournaments back in 2018.

Only 24 matches were wrestled between those two tournaments that year, but it sparked the idea that if girls only wrestled girls, the participation numbers might pop. Girls wrestling against boys was one of the major hurdles to growing statewide participation. Kirtley recognized Bailey’s efforts in her pre-dual speech.

“She’s been in this fight for way longer than I have,” Kirtley said. “She has been a grassroots advocate for women in the sport of wrestling. We’re excited to continue to watch that grow — not just at the junior high and high school level, but at the youth and collegiate levels, too. There’s a lot of battles to be had there.”

Spencer and Waverly-Shell Rock each drove two-plus hours for this first competition. Both programs have been instrumental in different ways in the continued growth of Iowa girls wrestling.

Spencer head coach Dave Storm, the 2021 All-Iowa Girls Wrestling Coach of the Year, helped grow the sport locally when his daughter, Paige, started wrestling. Paige became Iowa’s first two-time Junior women’s freestyle All-American, in 2005-06, and is now the first head women’s wrestling coach at Buena Vista.

Dave Storm stepped away from coaching for a while after Paige graduated high school but returned as statewide participation boomed over the last four seasons — from 188 girls during the 2018-19 season to more than 1,000 last season.

“This was really cool,” Storm said Monday night. “It’s about time, too.”

Waverly-Shell Rock has helped lead the girls wrestling charge in recent years. Head coach Eric Whitcome first surveyed girls in his school to gauge their interest in wrestling. The result was an 11-girl team for the 2018-19 season, along with uniforms, practice times and a two-month schedule all separate from the successful Go-Hawk boys program.

It was Whitcome who volunteered Waverly-Shell Rock as the host school for a girls state wrestling tournament, put on by the Iowa Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association in January 2019. Only 87 girls showed up through a snowstorm that day, but a precedent was set.

The next year, 350 girls wrestled at the state tournament, a big enough number that it became a two-day event. More signed up in 2020-21 — so many that the IWCOA moved the event to Xtream Arena in Coralville.

That same venue will host the first IGHSAU-recognized girls state wrestling championship in early February. The Go-Hawks, team champs the last four years, and Spencer are both expected to be major players for both individual hardware and team supremacy.

Monday night was the start of what many are expecting to be an exciting first official season for Iowa girls high school wrestling — so much so that Kirtley said DCG girls coach Rex Gray reached out to her two months ago, before practice even started, to set up the event.

Spencer’s Kiara Ruiz recorded the first win of the night, and the season, with a 92-second pin at 115 pounds. It was the first of six pins for the Tigers, who won a thrilling opener over Waverly-Shell Rock, 42-39.

The crowds roared all night for their wrestlers. Ankeny’s Elyse Engebretson scored two late takedowns for an 8-6 win over DCG’s Josephine Bond, then a pin from Avery Grim gave the Hawks an early 9-6 lead. The Fillies battled back and won the dual 48-27.

In the second round of duals, DCG topped Spencer behind eight individual wins and six pins. The Go-Hawks beat Ankeny by winning 10-of-14 weight classes with seven pins.

“It’s a start,” said Josh Meier, Waverly-Shell Rock’s newly appointed girls coach. He said it with a smile.

Cody Goodwin covers wrestling and high school sports for the Des Moines Register. Follow him on Twitter at @codygoodwin.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa high school girls wrestling season begins at Dallas Center-Grimes