Keeping up with the growth of women’s sports: wrestling
Maria Carrillo women's wrestling team (Kate Gonzales / The Puma Prensa)
By Isa Dajalos, staff writer
With winter inching closer, so too do the anticipated winter sports: soccer, basketball, and wrestling. More specifically, men’s soccer, women’s soccer, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, and coed wrestling. Maria Carrillo High School’s wrestling program is currently the only coed winter sport. The broad explanation for this is budgeting–which seems to be the answer to many school-related concerns lately. However, the history and expansion of women’s wrestling at MCHS and around the world demands attention in its rapid growth.
In the late 1960s and 70s, modern women’s wrestling began to take form on the coattails of the second feminist movement. It began on a small scale by being integrated into the men’s programs, and then it was added to FILA, the Fédération Internationale des Luttes Associées (International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles), now known as United World Wrestling (UWW).
Meanwhile, in 1972, Title IX of the education amendments prohibited sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal funding. Thus, schools were required to start providing all sports to both genders. The result of this is a world where teams like that of Bella and the Bulldogs can exist–for those who were not avid Nickelodeon watchers, this is a teen show about the captain of the cheer team joining the boy’s football team after impressing its coach. At its core, Title IX created public high schools with greater opportunities for both male and female students. It’s why almost all high schools have both men’s and women’s soccer teams or men’s and women’s basketball teams. However, it is also why so many high schools have small women’s wrestling teams that are simply nestled into the much larger “men’s” wrestling program.
Taking a deeper look into the semantics of it all, there are specific sport programs in schools that are not gendered. For example, volleyball and football are both sports that are not officially “men’s” or “women’s,” but when looking at the rosters, there are clear demographics of each team. The seemingly inclusive names, despite only a single gender occupying the playing field, are an impact of Title IX–ironically one that is essentially a reversal of its purpose. Because of the need to offer equal sports opportunities to all students, schools seem to have learned to save money by leaving certain sports technically open to either sex while maintaining a strictly male or female team. While this meets the legal requirements of Title IX, in a more tangible, social context, it discourages athletes of the minority sex from participating in these “coed” sports. Senior Kate Gonzales describes this effect on the girl’s wrestling team, explaining that “it can be pretty awkward for a newbie to be practicing a very physical and vulnerable sport in a room full of a bunch of boys.”
At MCHS, wrestling has always been a sport that occupies a gray area, where the team is coed in terms of having both female and male athletes present but whose numbers are still dominated by one gender. This year's roster is expected to have about 50 total athletes of which only 14 are female.
Gonzales has been on the wrestling team since her freshman year and has witnessed–and is largely responsible for–the recent growth of the girls’ team. During her first year, she was one of only four girls. This year, however, Gonzales is hoping to see 14 or more girls on the team thanks to her vigorous recruiting. She clarified that although this might not “seem like a lot,” it is a “big upgrade for a team that has never heard of over six girls in the past.”
This is not a new trend when it comes to the wrestling team’s roster. In fact, over the years, the girls' numbers have fallen below ten fairly consistently. Despite this, several outstanding female athletes have emerged from Carrillo over the years. Just last year, the girls took second in the league. Beyond last year’s strong team performance, Noelle Alexander qualified for state in 2024 and placed sixth in the CIF Championship meet. And beyond Alexander are years of state-qualifying female wrestlers at MCHS. In 2023, Alexander also qualified for state, preceded by Samantha Utter in 2019, who was preceded by not one but three state qualifiers in 2014: Shaina Dowell, Randi McMahan, and Molly Trejo. In the entire history of wrestling at Carrillo, there have been seven unique female athletes that qualified for state; that is a number that trails just one behind the eight male wrestlers that have qualified.
This achievement is all the more impressive when taken into the context of the women’s historically small team. Imagine how many female qualifiers and league champions could be produced with a more sizable team. Clearly, the issue is not lack of talent, or even lack of interest. Coach Tim Bruce, on his twenty-seventh season, points out that the district simply “needs to get up to speed.”
Outside the scope of our very own women’s wrestling program, the sport is blooming across the nation. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFSHS), girls’ wrestling is the fastest-growing high school sport in the United States, having doubled in participation from 2023 to 2024 alone and quintupled in size since 2013. This past August of 2025, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) announced women’s wrestling as its ninety-first championship sport, formally cementing it as more than an “emerging sport.” Women’s rugby is also on the emerging sports list and has seen major strides in popularity due to its introduction to the Olympics in 2016, and more recently due to athletes like Ilona Maher taking up a strong social media presence to uplift women athletes.
On the topic of the Olympics, a less celebrated Olympic achievement occurred in Paris last year. The 2024 Summer Olympic Games was the first time in history that equal numbers of male and female athletes competed. This was a goal that was years in the making, as the International Olympics Committee formally committed to pushing for gender parity in 2014. If the Olympics can achieve such a feat on an international level in just ten years, the possibilities of expanding Carrillo’s small but mighty girl’s wrestling program are endless if we start now.