9 ways collegiate coverage impacts women’s wrestling
The growth of women’s wrestling is fantastic. The depth in quality of competitors is getting better, and the number of opportunities is growing.
USA Wrestling does a great job covering women on their teams, and states have really stepped up by championing their ladies via social media and other state/local outlets.
But there’s this thing that’s been going on for years that’s been just out of focus and only improving slowly: lots of women going into college don’t actually know much about wrestling at that level and neither do their parents. Even though they think they might. This is NOT surprising—it’s been just out of focus from the media and there’s very little comprehensive information out there. We just don’t know what we don’t know.
Today we’re looking at 9 ways collegiate coverage could impact women’s wrestling.
Interscholastically
In the words of California’s 2019 Fargo 16U champ & Junior runner-up Jennifer Soto, “It would motivate a lot more young women to wrestle and it would definitely motivate me.”
1) It will create a clear path to a probable next step in a girl wrestlers academic and athletic career while helping athletes choose a best fit program for their goals.
2) Visibility allows female wrestlers to identify with women they can look up to and forward with.
3) An environment that hypes the atmosphere at the collegiate level increases excitement and drive for competition at the next level—the, “We get to be here” factor.
“If you ask a group of kids who their favorite professional football player is, they could name off numerous favorites depending on preference & where they’re from. We want to make sure that if we ask female wrestlers who their role-models are, that they recall the story of a female they personally identify with — maybe their home town, their state, their demographics — wrestling at the collegiate level. That’s inspiring and that helps them feel like their big dreams are wildly manageable.”
Collegiately (technically there are 6 packed into these 3)
4) Women deserve the coverage, period. Plus, their families and supporters—maybe haters?— get to witness their journeys.
5) It’s going to help fuel competition, healthy rivalries and fill rosters with quality student-athletes.
6) A network of coverage will provide alumni a space to stay connected to the sport, collectively, years after graduation. Right now, very few women stay connected with the sport as fans . . . it’s almost like they graduate and then disconnect because they don’t have anywhere to belong. THIS needs to change, right now.
Comprehensively
7) Girl wrestlers are more likely to join and stick with the sport when their friends suggest that they come to a practice if they can show them a space that embodies their efforts. The growth in numbers at the younger level pushes the sports trend toward a more competitive future of women wrestlers (& more dominant Team USA)
8) Coverage positions us to be picked up more readily by NCAA programs, and to fill competitive rosters for fan attracting dual meets. We need a lot more NCAA programs to add women’s wrestling as a varsity sport before it becomes a championship sport. The more we cover the sport, the more information the change makers can take to the board as substantiality to add programs that move us toward that championship status. We can’t just jump from where we are to where we want to be—we need to embrace the growth period, with all its joy and growing pains, and share it.
9) Social science tells us we like to shape our lives from the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and those we know about others. We have an opportunity to positively impact a lot of lives by sharing the stories of strong women just living life and being women.
2019 16U Fargo champs respond to questions about college & having their own media platform
Note: This article has been edited to remove information about our previously active kickstarter campaign.
