Libbie Chapdelaine has Feb. 18-20 circled on her calendar.
The Soddy-Daisy sophomore is planning to attend the traditional state wrestling tournaments, and she’s hoping to compete.
Girls’ wrestling again will be part of Tennessee’s championship competition, which this year moves to the Williamson County Agricultural Center in Franklin.
“It’s growing,” Soddy-Daisy coach Steve Henry said. “We’re headed in the right direction.”
Soddy-Daisy had a girls’ division in its invitational tournament a couple of weeks ago and wound up with 28 competitors despite the loss of teams from Stone Mountain, South Doyle and Science Hill because of inclement weather.
At least three schools in the Chattanooga area offer girls’ wrestling apart from the boys. Soddy-Daisy won the first girls’ state dual tournament and had competed for years against Red Bank in a fundraising girls’ meet. Signal Mountain has 10 girls competing.
“None of them have ever wrestled before, but we have submitted the names to the state,” Eagles coach Casey Thompson said. “We practice three or four days each week. Everybody seems to be OK with it. It’s new, so I guess we’re breaking that barrier. It has not traditionally been a female sport, but people are seeing that the girls are working as hard as the guys.”
The TSSAA has ruled that girls competing in the invitational state cannot have competed against boys during the season.
“There had been a debate whether girls who had wrestled guys could wrestle in this tournament,” TSSAA assistant director Mark Reeves said. “The format that was approved was for girls who had wrestled only girls. We’ll evaluate the numbers and see how that works and make adjustments if we need to. We’re looking for the best way to present it in order to grow the sport.”
Said Chapdelaine: “There’s a place for women, and sometimes it’s harder for girls to make a name for themselves. But I think if boys have a wrestling team, then so should girls, just like I think there if there’s girls’ volleyball then there should be boys’ volleyball.”
Last year’s invitational was open to girls who had competed against boys, primarily because of Tullahoma wrestler Emily Gessler. That rule has been changed.
“If girls are that dead set to wrestle guys, then they can still do that, but the majority of girls don’t want to,” Henry said. “There’s one girl out there who can compete with guys. Can she compete with the best guys? No, and the majority of girls aren’t at that level and won’t be for some time.
“She is a sweet girl and she and her family are nice people. We basically agreed to disagree.”
Reeves has checked nationally to see what other state associations have done and which have seen the sport grow.
“Folks are doing it different ways — compete separately or compete and then do what we did last year (allowing girls who had wrestled boys to compete in the girls’ tournament),” Reeves said. “Those who have been more successful have said, ‘We want girls wrestling girls only.’ That was the basis for our recommendation to the Board of Control.”
The TSSAA went so far as to declare girls ineligible for the girls’ tourney if they had competed against boys in junior varsity events.
“We said that and put it in writing on day one,” Reeves said. “I anticipate some disgruntled phone calls, but we wanted to head that off prior to the event.”
The other change from last year is that schools may wind up with more than one wrestler in each weight class to fill eight-wrestler brackets, but the coach will designate before the tournament starts which girl will be scoring team points.
Chapdelaine, who didn’t get to wrestle in last year’s tournament because she lost a challenge match, hopes to be one of those scoring points. A versatile middle school athlete who competed in softball, basketball, volleyball and golf, she grew up playing soccer but competes now only in wrestling.
“I don’t know what it is about the sport, but I love it,” she said. “It’s a team sport, but when you get down to it it’s you and another girl out there on the mat.”
Thompson has noted no real difference in coaching girls other than spending more time with the basics than with most guys.
“I had never coached girls, but they come to practice and work hard every day,” he said. “It’s starting fresh. We started with step one like we would with any first-year wrestler. It’s basic fundamentals.”