CLEARFIELD – Girls wrestling is the fastest-growing high school sport in the country.
In Pennsylvania, there’s been more than a 200 percent increase in girls’ participation in high school wrestling over the past several years.
According to SanctionPA, all 12 Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) districts have girls participating in wrestling within their area schools.
In 2021-22, there were over 300 girls participating on PIAA junior high teams and over 550 girls participating at PIAA high schools.
A non-PIAA affiliated state tournament for girls has been held since 1999 and hosted by PA USA Wrestling since 2012.
Girls wrestling was granted an “Emerging Sport Status” in February 2022, and now 100-plus high school programs exist statewide.
That milestone was monumental for the sport, giving it eligibility to officially become sanctioned by the PIAA, which happened May 17 with a unanimous board vote.
The decision made Pennsylvania the 39th state with a girls state wrestling tournament, which will now coincide with the boys championship, beginning in March 2024 in Hershey.
The move brought home CHS ’00 grad Tim Taylor, who following high school wrestled for the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army.
The three-time PIAA state placewinner was a two-time Olympic alternate; five-time U.S. national team member; seven-time Armed Forces Champion; and two-time University National Champion in men’s freestyle.
Taylor was a high school wrestling coach in Colorado, where he also helped start one of the best girls wrestling programs in the state.
Now he wants to bring that same success to his alma mater and other Clearfield area wrestlers—boys and girls.
He attended Monday’s Clearfield area school board committee meeting and asked about the status of establishing a girls wrestling program at the junior-senior high school.
Superintendent Terry Struble said the Athletic Department collected the names of seven or eight girls who would be interested in participating prior to the end of the school year.
Currently he said District 9 has recommended that Clearfield enter into a co-op agreement with another smaller program like Curwensville.
“… You need to have others in the room you can practice with,” he said, and if there’s only a small number of girls and weights vary, “we can’t necessarily do that.”
So, Athletic Director Robert Gearhart has started having preliminary conversations with both District 9 and Curwensville’s Athletic Department.
“We’re not to the point yet where we’re ready to bring something back to the board for approval,” said Struble. “It’s ADs talking … about what the [co-op] would look like … to make something meaningful happen.”
Taylor indicated he was “ready and willing” to help, and Struble advised Taylor if he had any girls interested in competing to provide their information to the AD.
If the school would enter a co-op with Curwensville, Struble said there would be some expense as they’d share costs for salaries, transportation, etc.
In a post-meeting interview with GANT News, Struble did say the district would explore establishing its own program in the future, if it were able to fill a full lineup.
“… Any time we have students who express interest, we try to support them. We would just need enough [participating] so we can do it well with the right structure, the right training.”
Any boy or girl in the Clearfield area who’s interested in training for wrestling with Taylor may contact him through the Clearfield Bison Wrestling: Home of Champions or Triple T Wrestling Facebook pages.