The Saegertown girls wrestling team might again return home next March with some hardware, but this time it will be won at the 10,500-seat Giant Center in Hershey.
The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association board of directors voted unanimously on Wednesday to sanction girls wrestling as an official sport. Pennsylvania is the 38th state in the country to sanction girls wrestling.
The 2023-24 season will be the first season with full sponsorship and with state championships scheduled for the same weekend as the boys championships.
There will be one classification for girls, as opposed to two for boys, according to PIAA Executive Director Bob Lombardi in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Lombardi also said the details of how many participants in each area is unclear, which means there likely will not be region tournaments. Instead, wrestlers will qualify for states at a district tournament. There will also not be a team wrestling tournament.
Saegertown was the first school in Crawford County to sponsor a girls wrestling team and the 54th in the state. PENNCREST School Board approved the program at a meeting in May of 2022 and approved Melissa Bartholomew as head coach in June.
“It is a great day for young women in Pa.,” Bartholomew said. “The girls now have another opportunity to participate in a sport that will give them equal chances like the boys to gain scholarship to a college for post-secondary education.”
Sanction PA, an organization with the goal of getting girls wrestling sanctioned as a PIAA sport, helps schools statewide with the process of becoming school-sponsored programs.
Saegertown was the third school in District 10 to sponsor a team. Seneca was the 11th in the state and Mercer 34th. General McLane followed locally Saegertown and was 56th. As of Wednesday, there were 111 schools on Sanction PA’s list of schools with official teams.
“The girls will also get to be state-ranked and be recognized in the state. I have a meeting (today) with Sanction PA that is going to outline some of how the season will go,” Bartholomew said. “One of my goals is to keep growing the program and hopefully we will be wrestling at the Giant Center alongside the boys.”
Last season, the team consisted of 20 girls from Saegertown, Cambridge Springs, Maplewood and Meadville. Kacie Mook, Leah Sample, Emma Spencer, Elora Dillinger and Kylie Stafford advanced to the 2023 MyHouse girls state wrestling championship at Central Dauphin High School in Harrisburg.
Mook and Sample returned home with medals. Mook placed second and Sample third.
Before Saegertown sponsored the team as a school-sanctioned program, Saegertown High School was the site of a girls dual meet between the Crawford Wrestling Club and Cannon-McMillan in January of 2022.
The Crawford Wrestling Club consisted mostly of girls from Crawford County and won the meet 48-27. The team practiced at Cambridge Springs Junior-Senior High School and most of the roster returned to compete for the Saegertown team last season.
