PIAA gives green light to girls' wrestling beginning next season

While there's still plenty of work to be done, Joe Stabilito couldn't be happier about Wednesday's announcement by the PIAA to officially sanction girls' wrestling as a sport beginning next season.

"Today is a really good day," said Stabilito, an assistant wrestling coach at William Tennent who is also secretary of SanctionPA (www.sanctionpa.com), which advocates for girls' wrestling, state chairman for PA USA Wrestling and long a driving force in promoting girls getting involved in the sport.

"It's a great day for the kids. We've come a long way and we still need to keep going and growing. Having the PIAA officially sanction the sport is really going to make things take off."

The PIAA Board of Directors gave unanimous approval to adding the sport during its meeting in Mechanicsburg on Wednesday.

Blessing from the PIAA

“Girls' wrestling has been growing across the country and a good number of states now have it,” PIAA executive director Bob Lombardi said. “I don’t have an exact number of states, but it has been growing the last two or three years. It’s another opportunity for kids to participate in a sport, and that’s a good thing.”

Lombardi also said the the plan is to have state championships for girls in Hershey next March at the Giant Center at the same time that the boys tournament is held. That was music to Souderton head girls' wrestling coach Chris Atkinson, who has worked tirelessly with Stabilito and others to make today happen.

"I'm happy for the whole wrestling community," Atkinson said. "For the girls to get the opportunity to compete for PIAA medals, and be in Hershey along with the boys, is great."

A slow start

"I remember in 2018, Joe and I took (PIAA assistant executive director) Mark Byers to lunch and he told us we needed to get 100 schools to sanction the sport before the PIAA would consider sanctioning it," Atkinson said.

"And we kind of left with our tails between our legs knowing that we had a lot of work to do. Then COVID hit and that didn't help, but schools kept jumping in and we reached the number we needed."

For subscribers: Girls' wrestling: Sport has experienced powerful nationwide growth, trending upward

SanctionPA lists 111 schools across the state that offer girls wrestling as a team sport. Forty-six of them, including, most recently, the three Central Bucks high schools, started programs during this school year. Pennsylvania is now the 38th state to officially sanction girls' wrestling.

While the hope down the road is to have full-lineup dual meets, that will take some time.

"I had four girls on my team at Souderton this season," Atkinson said. "Obviously, that's not enough for a dual meet, but we're going to have plenty of tournaments during the season to get the girls matches.

"But, when you look at our conference (the Continental) in the Suburban One League, every team has a girls' program, so we can build from there. And schools like Quakertown, Palisades in District 11, Perk Valley, Boyertown and others also have teams and that is going to help."

The boom is coming

An announcement like Wednesday's, though, according to Stabilito, will be enormous.

"Schools that don't have wrestling are going to have parents and wrestlers asking why don't they when it's now an official sport," Stabilito said.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we add another 100 programs in the near future. This is just going to explode and I couldn't be happier."

Check it out: What will the PIAA wrestling championships look like in 2024? Still hard to say

Drew Markol: dmarkol@theintell.com; @dmarkol

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: PIAA officially sanctions girls' wrestling as a sport