Girls division makes impact in OHSAA state wrestling debut

You could see it in the crowds. And you could feel it, too.

Yes, this was a different Ohio High School Athletic Association State Wrestling Tournament than ever before –

for the first time, a girls division was added to the OHSAA State Wrestling Championships, March 10-12 at the Jerome Schottenstein Center on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus.

Adding the girls to the mix with the usual Division I, II and III competitions on the boys side made an obvious impact right from the start at the Schottenstein Center. Opening-day attendance was 13,560 – reportedly a record for the first day. And when official attendance numbers are eventually released for the second and third days and overall, those totals could very well be records, too.

“It (the attendance) shows the growth of girls wrestling,” Western Brown boys and girls coach Wendel Donathan said. “In the first girls state tournament (conducted by the Ohio High School Wrestling Coaches Association in 2019), if you were a girl, and you wrestled, you were at state.”

Even on the floor, the difference was evident this year. The addition of the girls division brought 224 more wrestlers to the tournament, and the result was three consecutive days of nearly non-stop wrestling, from early in the day to well into the evening each day. All those wrestling fans were in heaven.

They weren’t alone.

“I like the big stage. You can feel the energy from everyone,” said Brown County wrestler Abigail Miller, who was competing in the girls 140-pound division.

“I absolutely love it,” Donathan said of girls division being added to the state tournament mix. “Girls wrestling is what’s helping to save this sport. When the sport gets possibly eliminated from the Olympics, and it was one of the first sports that were a part of the Olympics … something needs to change.”

From 2019-2022, the OHSWCA sponsored and ran the Ohio Girls State Wrestling Tournament. Hosted at Hilliard Davidson High School in the Columbus suburbs, it was a considerably smaller gathering than at the nearly 19,000-seat Schottenstein Center, a major venue for concerts and OSU basketball and hockey games.

“I wasn’t really scared. I think I stayed calm,” Miller said when asked if it was intimidating to compete in front of such large crowds. “I thought I’d be more anxious. But when the coaches are by your side telling you to do your thing, it calms everything down.”

In the OHSWCA state tourney, Miller placed sixth at 170 pounds in 2020, third at 170 in 2021 and eighth at 155 last year. She won her first match this year before losing her next two and didn’t place.

“Obviously, it’s added (pressure for the girls at state),” Donathan said. “We told them, ‘Here’s what to expect.’ When they put that OHSAA stamp on it (the tournament), that ups the ante.

“When they see it, they get those big eyes, with 15,000 people out there,” he added of the venue vibe. “But we try to tell them that not all 15,000 people will have their eyes on them.”

According to the OHSWCA website, the girls state tournament grew from an open format in 2020 to a fully-functioning state tournament with four qualifying districts. “This was accomplished in just three years and was a vital cog in OHSAA’s adoption of girls wrestling as their 27th sponsored sport,” the website said. And so, in this year’s tournament, girls wrestled in 14 weight classes – being contested on the same mats as the boys – with one division regardless of school enrollment.

“It’s been a big-time change,” Donathan said of the move to the OHSAA. “Once we got sanctioned, that’s when (things started to change for girls wrestling). But we’re not going to treat them like girls, we’re going to treat them like wrestlers, and the girls appreciate that. They like that.”