Pleasant Valley High School approves organizing girls wrestling for next season
There will soon be another girls wrestling team on the mountain as Pleasant Valley High School has voted to make the addition for next season.
"This will greatly benefit our girls not only on the mat but also in the classroom and even in their own lives," Pleasant Valley athletic director James Korcienski said in a statement. "Currently, we only offer girls basketball for our female athletes to participate in during the winter season. This will allow additional pathways of opportunity for success for our female athletes. I look forward to watching the program grow and also reevaluating and adjusting our coaching staff to meet the needs of both our boys and girls wrestlers."
The Bears have four girls on the wrestling team this year, and because girls wrestling is now a PIAA sanctioned sport, they cannot wrestle outside of the boys team against girls, or those competition points go against the boys team.
Pleasant Valley's program is currently under the direction of James Weiss, who is in his first year as head coach and brings experience from his time with club wrestling.
"I am very excited to be able to expand the team," Weiss said. "This year we had a lot of student-athletes come out, and it's great to give our female wrestlers an opportunity that doesn't require them to compete with our boys to fill a spot on the varsity lineup.
"I have a lot of parents asking me tons of questions about what the team will look like and how it will run. This tells me they have a daughter interested. Probably one of the greatest moments in my short tenure as head coach was being able to tell our girls K-8 club team that we got it done."
Weiss' next goal is to find girls who wrestled at an early age, but stopped once there weren't any more girls to compete with. If his efforts prove to be effective, the inaugural team should be pretty strong.
Pleasant Valley will be the third school to have a girls wrestling team on the mountain, joining Pocono Mountain East and Pocono Mountain West. The two established teams met earlier this season in the first-ever girls match between two Monroe County schools.
This article originally appeared on Pocono Record: Girls wrestling coming to Pleasant Valley next season
