Five years in, girls’ wrestling proves successful in South Dakota

High school girls wrestling is in its fifth season in South Dakota and each year has seen continued growth. What started as a shell with potential has ballooned into something that’s stable, exciting, and continued growth.

For the 2024-25 wrestling season, 98 schools are listed for having girls wrestling. In some cases, it might mean just a few girls, but in other cases, schools have a healthy amount of participation.

“The good thing with wrestling is you don’t need a full team to do it. We see larger schools with a couple girls, we see smaller schools with a lot of girls,” said Dan Swartos, Executive Director of the South Dakota High School Activities Association. “I think as that continues to grow, you’ll see more as far as team duals, fuller teams, things like that.”

With more teams housing girls’ wrestlers, the total numbers have also drastically increased throughout the past five years.

“I think we had 125 that first year. We were just under 700 this year, and I think that’ll continue to grow,” stated Swartos. “There’s been a progression in terms of skills, I think, as the girls continue to learn more and they’re growing up doing more wrestling, getting instruction in wrestling, so I think that’s had a big impact as well.”

Even though girls wrestling has a lot of momentum currently, this doesn’t mean everything is perfect as is. Like most sports, the activities association is continuing to have conversations to improve the back-end format.

“The one thing we need to keep looking at and refine is the qualification piece to this. We see it in other sports too. You see it in golf regions, you can see it in cross country regions, but right now there are a lot more girls in region four than there is some of the other regions,” Swartos explained. “There’s not an easy way to split that up or fix it, because we’re trying to keep the boys and girls in the same regions.”

While boys wrestling is split into two classes, A and B, girls wrestling currently remains under the one-class umbrella. Will it eventually move to two classes like the boys? Perhaps, but the participation numbers will need to continue to grow before that likely happens. As it currently sits, some of the weight classes for girls are still seeing byes in the early rounds of the state tournament.

“Where we see most of our girls right now is those lower weights. We get thin on numbers when you get heavier in the weights,” told Swartos. “We’ll see if there’s a push to [add two] or continue doing what we’re doing.”

However way you slice it, wrestling is a big part of the sports landscape in South Dakota. And with girls wrestling showing a positive outlook currently and for the future, the overall promise remains high for wrestling.

“I think there’s a lot of good wrestling across the upper Midwest and in the northern plains. I think South Dakota has some great wrestling, right along there with Nebraska,” said Swartos. “Of course you get into Iowa, Pennsylvania and Ohio, those are some hot beds for wrestling. I think wrestling is in a healthy spot right now in South Dakota in terms of skill, participation, and numbers, and we’re excited about it.”

The SDHSAA state wrestling championships are currently underway from the Summit Arena at The Monument in Rapid City. Saturday’s championship round will air live on SDPB1-TV at 1 pm MT.