The Norwin Girls Wrestling program came to Norwin during the 2022-23 school year and has been growing fast ever since. The program has 13 girls on the high school team and 7 girls on the middle school team, with a total of 20 girls in the program.
With 20 girls in the high school and middle school wrestling program, the team continues to grow. Since the program has been recently started, some girls have a lot of experience, and some are just starting.
“In freshman year gym class, Jojo Dollman came up to me and asked me if I wanted to see a video of her throwing a girl and I said yes. She started taking me to wrestling practice, and I loved it,” senior Lily Chaney explained.
At practices, the girls warm up for about 15 minutes, work on some techniques, and then live wrestle each other.
“Our biggest challenge this year has been balancing the Wrestling curriculum with the experience levels on the team. We have a lot of first-year girls and freshmen this year,” said girls wrestling coach Nicholas Semon. “We aim to perfect the fundamental positions of wrestling, but we still want to cater to the more experienced girls on the team. Finding that balance is difficult, but it has been slowly coming together recently.”
The girls have been putting in the work. They want to prove how impactful and strong girls’ wrestling is as a team. Some girls have been training since summer, but the first official practice was on November 14 so a lot of girls only had a couple of weeks to get ready for the duals.
“[There are] no issues with the veterans; some of the new additions, mostly underclassmen, are getting adjusted to the tough work ethics expected of them by the staff,” said assistant coach Giovanni Gulli.
The girls on the team have encouraged anyone to join. There were only a few people when the program started, and now they have a full team. The program even held an event in the Middle School Wrestling Room that invited any girls from kindergarten to 12th grade to try wrestling out. The Lady Knights ran the practice and taught some wrestling basics, played games, and got the new girls excited to join wrestling.
“One misconception about wrestling is that only certain-looking people can do it,” Chaney exclaimed. “I have had various people tell me that I don’t look like a wrestler or girls can’t wrestle. The beautiful thing about wrestling is literally anyone can wrestle and learn from it if they push themselves, no matter who they are or what they look like.”
The Lady Knights started their season off with a school dual against Canon-McMillan. The girls unfortunately lost, but bounced back strong at the 3rd Annual Boiling Springs Holiday Classic.
The Lady Knights grapplers went 3-3 overall, finishing 4th in the Gold Pool out of 15 teams and almost pulled out the upset against Montgomery which is the #1 Dual team in the state last year.
On December 16, the Lady Knights faced off against Upper Saint Claire in their first and only home match. The girls put up a great fight, but ultimately lost the match with the Lady Knights scoring 30 points and Upper Saint Claire scoring 42 points.
The girls hope to bounce back and are still confident they are going to have a good season.
“I feel that it is going well and that we have a really good team this year,” said senior Lily Holtzman. “I feel as if we are good. We need to work on some mental toughness, but other then that we are all good.”
There are 12 weight classes, and the girls fill up all of them. Girls wrestling often manage their weight to compete in specific weight classes for fair matchups.
