Girls wrestling will be a preliminary sanctioned sport by the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission starting with the 2026-27 season.
The move was voted on by the Board of Directors Tuesday night and announced by the WVSSAC Wednesday afternoon.
“The vote for preliminary sanctioning of girls wrestling is an important step in legitimizing the sport while supporting its continued growth,” Meredith Dailer, WVSSAC Board of Directors Chair and Principal at Wheeling Park High School, said in the official release. “This reasonable and flexible approach ensures our female student-athletes have the opportunity to compete and allows the sport to develop in a thoughtful, sustainable way.”
The decision comes a week after the WVSSAC announced that girls regional tournaments will be held for the first time ahead of this year’s West Virginia Girls Invitational, an event that started in 2020. There will be two regionals, at Parkersburg and Buckhannon-Upshur high schools, on Sunday. The top eight finishers in each of 12 weight classes will move on to the state tournament which will be contested alongside the boys state consolation matches for the third straight year, March 7 at the Marshall Health Network Arena.
That move was initially viewed as a positive step toward sanctioning, but was soon heavily criticized for its timing. Those concerned believe the decision was rushed and that it gave just 12 days to get everything ready — from wrestlers’ preparation to hosting the tournaments in a quality fashion — when it could have been addressed at the start of the season.
Wayne Ryan, executive director of the WVSSAC, explained Wednesday that the term “preliminary” is important because, even as the sport is officially sanctioned, there are parameters that still must be considered. For instance, WVSSAC by-laws state that 31 teams are required for a sport to be sanctioned. Girls wrestling carries 12 weight classes, so a school must have at least six weight classes filled to qualify as a team.
Right now, according to Ryan, that number is at 27.
“To sanction the sport is misunderstood,” he said. “Once it’s sanctioned, there are very strict rules that must be followed. You’re only (permitted) on one eligibility. You’re on a girls wrestling eligibility or boys wrestling eligibility. There may be schools, now that we’ve sanctioned a sport, whose counties don’t decide to immediately fund it with their own coach, pay the transportation bill, all that stuff. Now, we certainly hope they do, but we also think some girls may get caught in situations where those counties don’t, and if they don’t, you’re still going to have some single wrestlers or some two or three wrestlers that may have to still participate in a co-ed format, and if you sanction it, then they could not wrestle over in girls events.
“By giving it preliminary status, it gives us some leeway to continue to progress and grow the sport of wrestling, which is very important to us, and we felt that we’ve done a good job doing that over the last few years. We want to be able to continue, and that’s why the preliminary status is very, very important.”
Ryan added that the preliminary sanctioning provides leeway in allowing multiple girls to enter a weight class.
Starting next year, there will be an official WVSSAC girls state championship, preceded by regional qualifiers, just as there are for the boys sport. It’s too early to know the details of those tournaments.
“We’ll be forming a girls wrestling coaches committee and we’ll be looking at all the details of that,” Ryan said. “But, in theory, it’ll be just like basketball. The girls wrestling will start a week earlier and our state tournament will be a week earlier. Locations, we’ll put it out for bid and we’ll go from there.”
Until this year, girls did not have to qualify for the state invitational. A spike in numbers made going to a regional qualifying format necessary.
Growth has been significant in West Virginia. Ryan said 310 girls are participating this season, nearly doubling the 182 of last year. The 2025 tournament ran longer than expected because of an increase from 2024.
Going to regions will cut that 310 down to 192 — 96 from each region — and help the girls invitational run more timely and smoothly. The state tournament will start at 8 a.m., two hours earlier than the last two years.
Girls wrestling has been the fastest growing high school sport in the United States for several years. According to an August release by the National Federation of State High School Associations, national participation grew 15 percent in the 2024-25 academic year, topping 74,000 for the first time.
West Virginia becomes the 47th state to sanction girls wrestling.
“It’s just going to provide us some leeway to continue to help the sport grow and develop as we move forward,” Ryan said. “I think the numbers will increase rather quickly now that we’ve sanctioned girls wrestling.”