In middle school, Laurel Haverkamp would square up eye-to-eye with her opponent — who was almost always a boy. Due to this, she dropped the sport she loved before starting high school, opting instead to manage the boys wrestling team. She says now that she felt matches between a boy and girl would sometimes create a disadvantage in size or aggressiveness for her, proving to be too intense.

But this decision was reversed this year, her senior year of high school, as Iowa City West High School sent an all-female team to compete at all-girl wrestling tournaments for the first time ever.

The new West High team was created as the number of girls participating in wrestling statewide more than doubled this year. To cap off Haverkamp’s first season wrestling competitively since middle school, she faced off against three other girls during Iowa’s second-annual all-girls weekend tournament Jan. 24-25 two-and-a-half hours away in Waverly, Iowa.

She walked away from the meet without clearing to the semi-finals, but said that feeling the swell of support from parents and friends for her one and only year of high-school wrestling was still a high note to end her high-school career.

“The environment has been insane, the community is really rallying around all their girls and just walking through these back hallways, it’s hard to walk back here and not see a coach either hyping up or calming down one of their girls,” Haverkamp said. “Overall it just feels like, almost exactly like any other boys wrestling meet you would go to.”

Across the state, more girls are venturing into the typically male-dominated sport of wrestling. West High is now one of 15 schools in Iowa that have all-girls teams with members numbering into the double digits, said Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union Executive Director Jean Berger. Most schools have two to five girls integrated into a boys’ wrestling team.

This year, 532 high-school girls participated in wrestling on a boys’ team in Iowa, more than two times the 200 high-school girls who competed in the sport during the 2018-19 academic year.

Advocates are working to harness that added interest and set up all-girls meets and matchups sanctioned by the Iowa High School Girls Athletic Union.

Nationally, since 1994 the number of high-school girls who wrestle has increased from 804 to 21,124 as of 2019, according to data from the National Wrestling Coaches Association. A sanctioned official scholastic state championship is held for girls wrestling in 21 states.

Growing up with a family full of wrestlers meant that West High sophomore Ava Davis spent many long days at wrestling tournaments watching her brothers compete. Although she always wanted to try the sport, she seldom saw girls get the chance.

“I know there’s a boys’ basketball team, girls’ basketball team, girls’ swimming, and boys’ swimming, and I’m so happy now they’re doing girls’ wrestling and boys’ wrestling because I think it’s a great opportunity for all the girls to get in and just show them what they can do,” Davis said.

Before joining the team, Davis didn’t know much wrestling terminology beyond “pinning” an opponent or “taking down” someone. She’s since learned new techniques and said that she’s discovered there is so much still to learn about the sport.

The team started practices in December 2019 and was set to have five tournaments this season, but two were canceled due to weather.

West High teacher Kody Pudil held an informational meeting before the start of the season to gauge the girls’ interest in wrestling. To Pudil’s surprise, around 30 girls attended the meeting and 23 showed up to the first 6:30 a.m. practice.

He asked Justin Koethe, a former wrestler and boys’ wrestling coach, to coach the team — his first venture into training a female team. When offered the position, he saw it as an opportunity to make a lasting impact on the sport he’s participated in all his life, Koethe said.

When he was a wrestler, Koethe said, no girls competed. As girls’ interest in the sport grew, the only outlet for them to participate was on a boys’ team.

Having all-girls teams in wrestling allows the athletes to have more fun and truly compete to be the best they can be, Koethe said. The new team allows the girls to be more comfortable and wrestle people who are closer to their size and build, he added.

“I really would like to see it become a legitimized sport,” Koethe said. “Right now it’s not technically a school-sanctioned sport, it’s more of like a club thing. So, within the next couple of years, I would definitely love to see it become a sanctioned sport.”

In order to make girls wrestling a sanctioned sport, the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union needs 15 percent, around 50 schools, to request sanctioning, Berger said. Currently, 18 schools have put in requests and 15 are in the exploratory stages of creating programs, she added.

“There are a lot of schools monitoring it and looking at it and want to make sure that, at least for their girls, their school is ready,” she said.

The number of girls participating jumped this academic because the girls now have the opportunity to wrestle other girls, Berger said. There are 16 girls-only wrestling meets in Iowa, giving girls the chance to compete without boys, she said.

To finish out their season, the West High team participated in the girls’ state wrestling tournament at Waverly-Shell Rock High School. Although it was only its third tournament this season, the team placed fifth overall, with one of its wrestlers, Mami Selemoni, placing second in her weight class and another, Salima Omari, securing a state title in hers.

Despite only competing in two all-girl tournaments before state, the girls exceeded Koethe’s expectations. By the time semifinals and finals rolled around, Koethe said he didn’t care what their team score was, but just wanted to see the girls keep winning their matches and bring home some hardware.

To Koethe and the girls, who enjoyed their time working together, the season wasn’t long enough. In the coming year, Koethe hopes take the team to 15 dual meets and tournaments to give them more opportunities to compete and improve throughout their season.

“The changes I’ve seen in the girls throughout the season is incredible,” Koethe said. “They’ve built confidence in all aspects of their lives.”

Looking at the team from the beginning of the season to now, Koethe said, they look like a completely different group of girls. One girl would barely touch her opponent at the start of the season, he recalled. Now, after two months of practice, referees at the state tournament reprimanded her for being too rough.

Haverkamp was excited to see how much progress she and her teammates made since state would be their first tournament since December 2019. At the last two tournaments, the girls cheered each other on during each match, and Haverkamp said she was looking forward to seeing everyone come together like that again.

Haverkamp watched her sister serve as a manager on a boys’ wrestling team, which initially sparked her interest in participating in the sport. She wrestled on the boys’ team in seventh and eighth grades before breaking her hand.

She decided not to continue wrestling into high school, saying matches against boys can become much too intense since boys tend to get more aggressive. Instead, she chose to become a manager for the boys team until she decided to wrestle alongside the girls this year.

Within the first week of practice the girls became fast friends, forging immediate bonds and growing more comfortable around each other as time went on. The team starts practices by goofing around and laughing with each other during warm-ups. As they start jogging and stretching, Haverkamp said, the group quiets down and gets “in the zone.”

“Not only is wrestling a sport that everyone should get the opportunity to try, but it’s one of those things where girls kind of can get put in a box of like not being tough, or kind of being the weaker gender,” Haverkamp said. “I think the fact that we have a girls’ wrestling team goes against all that.”

After noticing a push across the state from other schools to bring girls wrestling to the high school level, Pudil asked the school’s athletic director how that could be a reality. He then conducted a survey at the school last spring to see how many girls would be interested.

The fairly high turnout to informational meetings spurred Pudil and school administrators to begin discussing whether the school would fund the program and logistics, he said.

The school and the Iowa City Community School District as a whole have both supported and helped in the process of developing and looking for funding of the program, Pudil said. During the initial survey conducted, Pudil said he received praise from other teachers who hoped he would be able to make the team a reality.

“This obviously shows that, especially a school our size, that there are a lot of female athletes out there that want to participate and want to try out something new,” Pudil said. “Hopefully something like this inspires other schools to take a risk with it and see how many girls are interested.”

Although the other high schools in Iowa City don’t have all-girls wrestling teams, they are able to join West High’s team to have the opportunity to compete with other girls, Pudil said.

West High sophomore Mattie Harms heard about the informational meeting from a friend before going to practices and giving the sport a try. Harms ran cross country and played soccer, she said, but had never wrestled.

Harms sees the team as a way to give girls the opportunity to try out a sport they might be interested in.

“I hope that we can keep the team going next year and for many years to come,” she said. “Hopefully girls wrestling will become a state-wide thing that every high school can have as an opportunity for the girls.”

Luke Eustice, who works in sports development at Think Iowa City, volunteers as a coach for the team and hopes to help the sport grow through creating local competition for it.

Eustice said he and his colleagues prioritize laying down the infrastructure for a girls’ wrestling program, such as planning and putting on all-girls events, to make forming a girls’ wrestling team a viable and practical option for schools.

He added he hopes these matchups and tournaments showcase interest girls have in the sport, eventually showing administrators at the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union that forming an official girls program statewide is a worthwhile venture.

“[The girls] are very proud of being the first girls’ wrestling program at West,” Eustice said. “I know that just from talking to them that they take a lot of pride in that.”

After watching her brother Ashton wrestle when he was younger, West High sophomore Emma Barker wanted to give the sport a try. She wrestled on the boys’ team last year before joining the girls team this winter.

Her brother has been a big supporter of hers since the beginning, Barker said.

“It’s just all because of Ashton, you know, I started it with him,” she said. “He pushed me into it, he started doing it to get better at it, he’s always there for me.”

Barker was injured during the meet and thus unable to continue competing. An injury Koethe felt could have been prevented, if the referees would have stopped the girls from continuing the match.

Something the girls can agree upon is that they want to see the wrestling program continue to grow and improve in the years to come.

“I’ve only heard of it in Iowa really and I hope it gets [popular] in other states and starts to bring it up and everybody starts talking about it,” Davis said. “I just hope that it’s not something little, I hope when people talk about the boys’ state tournament they also talk about the girls’ state tournament like it means something to them.”