Bec Striffler is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Westview High School for AZPreps365.com.

With the AIA’s plans to hold more separate girls wrestling tournaments this season, Westview High School plans to form an official girls wrestling team this winter.

After seeing increased participation in its summer league, aided by growing interest in women’s wrestling following the Summer Olympics, Westview feels this is the perfect year to create a formal team.

“Now we can show people that women can [wrestle] and spread awareness that anything’s possible for our generation,” said Westview junior wrestler Yesenia Vega. “I feel like a lot of people didn’t know there was girls wrestling until they watched it on the Olympics.”

Vega started wrestling her freshman year of high school after competing in Muay Thai and wanted a contact sport to compete in at her school. Wrestling, a family sport in her home, seemed the perfect answer.

“There aren’t any contact sports tailored toward girls,” Westview boys wrestling head coach William Chaffee said. “We have a lot of jiu-jitsu girls come out and wrestle. We even have two girls on the football team that want to wrestle.”

In previous seasons, Westview’s wrestling team had usually one to two girls competing consistently alongside the boys, and even wrestling boys so long as other schools felt comfortable enough to agree.

“They wrestled strictly boys,” said Chaffee. “Not a lot of teams in the Valley had girl wrestlers. This year, there are tournaments that the boys have, but now they’re having separate girl tournaments. So there’s a lot more availability for girls to wrestle girls. Not a lot of teams like to have their boys wrestle girls anymore, so we’re starting to see more opportunities for the girls to compete now.”

In its infancy, the state-wide infrastructure of the girls wrestling program has a lot of growing to do, but separate tournaments have opened the doors for reliable competition opportunities for female wrestlers.

Darin Williams, who has assistant coached the Westview wrestling team for 23 years and plans to become the girls’ head coach, said,” I see it as a slow transition. I don’t think it’s going to be a snap of the fingers like other sports where the team is completely separate with their own schedules, coaches and practices.”

Williams explained that the boys and girls teams will practice at the same time on opposite sides of the room, learning the same skills. Because the wrestling team has competed previously with both genders, the coaches felt no need to separate the two outside of competition.

“At Westview, we don’t have boy wrestlers and girl wrestlers — we have wrestlers,” Williams said. “They like being treated the exact same, and we are trying to attend tournaments where the girls compete at the same place and time in separate competitions.”

The Tolleson Union High School District canceled the wrestling season last year out of COVID-19 precautions. Instead, the teams within the district competed in a summer league, and after many girls competed regularly, Chaffee feels confident that at least 11 girls will compete on the team this season.

In order to grow the program, the girls and coaches have been trying to educate a lot of Westview’s female athletes about the sport.

Williams said, “If I see a girl in the hallways and know she’s a good athlete, I will reach out to her. The more girls that are enjoying it advertise it by word of mouth. It’s honestly starting to snowball.”

Vega explained that she has also spread the word to girls at her school about the value of the sport.

“It gives you a lot of strength out of school and teaches you self-defense,” the junior said. “The way I see wrestling is that it’s all on you. It’s not on the entire team, so I feel like it’s more working on improving yourself and your individual skills.”

In its inaugural girls wrestling season, Westview hopes to emerge as one of the largest programs in Arizona, excited to bring its preexisting skills to the table and give girls an outlet for participating in contact sports.

“These girls are athletes,” said Williams. “They play for the right reasons. They get in there and work as hard as the boys, and they have the desire to learn which is refreshing, and so it has been so fun for me to coach the females.”