‘It was simply time.’ Idaho adds its own girls wrestling state tournament in 2022.
Idaho’s female wrestlers will soon have an opportunity to compete for their own state championship.
The board of the Idaho High School Activities Association unanimously finalized a plan Tuesday to sponsor an official, girls-only state tournament starting in the 2021-22 school year.
That makes Idaho the 29th state in the country — and one of the last in the West — to host an official and separate state wrestling tournament for girls, according to Wrestle Like a Girl, an organization that has pushed for recognition.
“I’m excited,” Pocatello wrestling coach JB Plato said. “I’m thinking ahead that hey, we’re going to have more tournaments and more girls turn out.
“This is going to improve wrestling throughout Idaho, from the youth level to middle school to high school, and give girls more of an opportunity to continue their education in college.”
Idaho’s female wrestlers previously had to compete against boys in the state’s official championship tournament. They will again this winter as Idaho takes the next year to iron out the details, such as how many weight classes it will need and how girls qualify for state.
For now, Idaho will only host a single girls state tournament for athletes in all classifications.
“It’s going to take us a while to get that up and going,” said Ty Jones, the executive director of the IHSAA. “But we’ll get to work right away on it.”
The ranks of Idaho’s girls wrestlers have swelled in recent years. The state saw 40 girls wrestle in 2016-17, according to statistics kept by the National Federation of State High School Associations.
That grew to 112 in 2018-19, the most recent year available. And according to estimates, approximately 200 wrestled last winter, a five-fold increase in three years.
The quality has also increased as a record 13 girls qualified for last year’s state tournament. But they all were in the lower weight classes, 126 pounds or lower, and none placed.
Only two girls have ever placed at the Idaho state wrestling tournament: Mountain Home’s Aerial Groene (fourth at 4A 106 in 2012) and Post Falls’ Cierra Foster (third at 5A 106 in 2014).
Idaho joins neighboring states Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah and Montana in hosting an official and separate state tournament for girls. Wyoming is now the only state in the West yet to sanction a separate tournament.
“You look at some of the other states around us,” Jones said, “as more and more opportunities grow, it was simply time.”
Official sanctioning has led to a boon in other states. For example, Missouri had 176 female wrestlers in 2018. After state sanctioning, it had 976 a year later.
Pocatello hosted an unofficial state tournament the past two years. It drew 103 female wrestlers last season, up from 52 the year before. Plato said Pocatello plans to host it again Feb. 13 to keep up the momentum ahead of the 2021-22 season.
FALL STATE TOURNAMENT CHANGES
The IHSAA also approved a trio of changes to the upcoming state tournaments Wednesday.
It will replace the traditional, double-elimination state brackets in volleyball with the modified single-elimination brackets used in sports like soccer and basketball.
A team can lose in the first round and play for a consolation trophy, but it cannot rally its way back to a championship in the new format.
Jones said that will allow one match at a time on a gym floor instead of the normal two, which will increase the social distancing between fans in the stands and teams waiting to play their next game as Idaho continues to battle the coronavirus.
Jones added the tournaments will clear the gym between matches.
“What that does is it eliminates multiple exposures between people,” Jones said. “The vast majority of schools that we spoke to that have done their regular season that way said it works really well.”
The IHSAA will also turn its state cross country meet into a two-day event Oct. 30 and 31. Jones said the host site, Eagle Island State Park, will only allow 250 people to enter the park at once, forcing the state to spread its championship event over two days.
The board also approved moving the state wrestling tournament to the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa this winter. Idaho State University’s Holt Arena was the original host, but Jones said the university told him to look for alternate sites in case it does not reopen in time for the Feb. 26-27 tournaments.
Holt Arena is closed to the public this fall, making it unavailable as a host site for state football championship games and for the Pocatello-Chubbuck School District.
This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 3:13 PM.
