Cumberland Valley's Aja'nai Jumper, bottom, lifts Quakertown's Peyton Fries, top, during the first found of the PIAA High School Wrestling Championships in Hershey, Pa., Thursday, March 7, 2024. Girls’ wrestling has become the fastest-growing high school sport in the country. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Cumberland Valley's Aja'nai Jumper, bottom, lifts Quakertown's Peyton Fries, top, during the first found of the PIAA High School Wrestling Championships in Hershey, Pa., Thursday, March 7, 2024. Girls’ wrestling has become the fastest-growing high school sport in the country. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Aired; October 21st, 2024.
Flag football and wrestling are the newest sanctioned girls’ sports in Pennsylvania. According to Lyndsay Barna, the Assistant Executive Director of the PA Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) says both sports passed with flying colors with support from the PIAA board.
“a sport needs to hit emerging sport status to have 25 teams across the state to sponsor the sport. And then when we reach 100 teams, that way we can bring it to the board and start trying our sanctioning process. The board needs to approve of the sport on three separate readings. And for each of the sports they passed with flying colors with the support from our board. And it’s really awesome to say the last two years we’ve been able to sponsor or sanction a girl sport across Pennsylvania, “said Barna.
As of now, there’s currently 100 schools in Pennsylvania that offer girls flag football. Barna also credits the Eagles and Steelers for their support.
“So the NFL has an initiative with girls flag across the whole United States and the Eagles and Steelers took it upon themselves three years ago to really contact schools, get schools involved. They were sponsoring schools to where they were helping them out, getting their uniforms. And I’ve just got it started that way, “said Barna.
Ryan Seagreaves is the girls wrestling head coach at Cumberland Valley High School. Seagreaves credits his daughters for getting him involved in coaching girls wrestling.
“ It started with me, it started with my daughter, my daughter’s one of the four girls on my team. And I was coaching in the youth program a couple of years ago five years ago now. And as the year went on, like the number of girls in our band, the rest of them grew and I think that was my daughter’s second year in sport. And at the end of it I you know very candidly, and I think she might have been in sixth grade and was like, hey, what? You know, what do you think about all this? You know, and she just said, I like it, but I don’t want to wrestle boys anymore and I’d like to be on a girls team. And so, you know, when, you know, parents will do anything for their kids and I’m no different. So, I was like, well, I guess I’m going to make a girls’ team next year. So, I just kind of went through the youth program and said, hey, we’re going to have a girls’ team next year because that’s what I’m going to volunteer to do. And so, I want to say that it was like 20, 21, “said Seagreaves.
Now that the sport is officially sanctioned it Pennsylvania, Barna believes it will add more opportunities for women years to come.
“ This not only creates a new opportunity for girls to get involved, it creates new avenues, whether it’s into college, it’s a job, it’s coaching, it’s anything. There’s so many things on the back end of this, and I only see these two sports growing because of what is happening in the Olympics, too. With flag football going to be an Olympic sport in 2028, and you’ve seen our United States people represent us in wrestling, so it’s something special, “said Barna.
