Wrestling pushes your body and your limits in ways hard to find in many other sports. When you’re up against an opponent, once you get past technique, it is entirely a mental battle. Who’s willing to quiet the voice in their head telling them to give up during the toughest moments. Who’s willing to push through pain and emerge with greater grit, mental toughness, and stamina. Your success in a match, unlike many other sports, is a direct reflection of how hard you are able to push yourself physically. Having finally been cleared to return to sports after seven months of ACL recovery, I decided to dive in at the deep end and joined wrestling. Unexpectedly, I found myself falling in love with the sport. Wrestling is a space where girls are taught to be strong, confident, and unapologetic in ways we don’t always get to be. A place where female athletes flip and fight each other with an unabated intensity, all while encouraging one another to get back up again and again.
Wrestling is a historically male-dominated sport, characterized by stereotypical male attributes: tough, aggressive, domineering, even rageful. But in the past decade women’s participation in wrestling has increased nearly sevenfold, to 74 thousand participants in the US in the 2024-25 season. The global spread of awareness has been the result of tireless advocates from initiatives like Wrestle Like A Girl. They have made tremendous strides for the sport, through directly involving girls and women in wrestling conferences and clinics, lobbying for the sport’s funding, and pushing through the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) decision to place women’s wrestling at a Championship Status, meaning athletes can now compete for NCAA titles.
One significant contributor in this cause is Kate Zavuholnik, the first women’s wrestling coach at Ithaca High School. She volunteered her time last season to build the program from the ground up, helping make this year’s inaugural IHS girls wrestling team a reality. In an interview, she explained, “Expanding sports is essential to the wellbeing of girls and women.” For the first time in history, sports have allowed women to enter environments where they are permitted to take up space, be in touch with their bodies, and recover from failure. They are able to lead— either through captaining a team, supporting teammates, or simply showing up and holding themselves accountable. All these qualities carry into classrooms, careers, and futures. Women accessing sports is women being able to access a world of opportunity outside of athletics. Sports can completely shape what girls believe they are capable of and unlocks success to a scale women have never had access to before.
Additionally, the immense national and global expansion of women’s wrestling is promising for all efforts to bring about gender-equal change in other sports. As Zavuholnik says, “creating female friendly spaces in a historically male dominated sport will, without a doubt, positively impact other sports.” Milestones reached in women’s wrestling signal the increasing institutional willingness to accommodate and invest in women’s sports, setting a precedent for gender equity in all athletics.
Hearing the stories of women who came before begs the necessity of these efforts. Personal accounts from women, who decades ago were brave enough to attempt to enter a wrestling room as the only girl, detail being threatened by coaches who tried to sexually intimidate or humiliate them. Zavulholnik reflects on the institutional improvements: “We are past having girls be courageous enough to step into the wrestling room as the only female athlete. Girls and women should have a supportive coach, and access to girls only practice rooms and competitions.” Every practice, every competition, every girl who steps out on the mat, is a direct challenge to the misogynist systems that blockaded women in the past.
Zavulholnik highlights the value of female coaches as both role models of strength and leadership and as mentors who understand the unique experiences of female athletes.
As female wrestlers, “We are all in it together to grow the sport,” says Zavulholnik. We’re not only in it for the sport, but to show the world our capabilities and show women our potential. As a sport that demands equal part strength and mental resilience, wrestling offers women a uniquely empowering space. Zavulholnik continues, “Wrestling is tough. You have to have the endurance of a runner, the strength of a powerlifter, and the agility of a gymnast. On top of this, the mental component is the hardest one to master.”
The community and network of girls I have found in the wrestling room is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. At Ithaca High School, where nearly all the girls are new to wrestling, there is a shared, deep-hearted desire for the success and perseverance of every single other girl.
There are testaments to the capability of female wrestlers even within our brand new program at IHS. Mira Cohen ’23, one of the program’s first female wrestlers, in the 2022-23 season, began wrestling her senior year and made it fourth in the Southern Tier Athletic Conference (STAC) Championship and sixth in Sectionals. Brooke Parker ’27 and Rayna Coller ’27 who made up the girls wrestling team in the 2024-25 season both brought home serious accolades, placing in both STAC and Sectionals. Both return this year on a winning streak; Brooke ranked fourth in STACand Rayna first.
For anyone starting out, Zavulholnik offers this advice: “The expectation is that you are coachable, not perfect. And most importantly, as with anything in life, have fun and do not quit. You will thank yourself later!”
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