Terre Haute Tribune-Star
Female athletes at Vigo County and Wabash Valley high schools have helped open future opportunities for others. They are pioneers and groundbreakers.
Twenty-one years ago, Terre Haute North needed to win the final match of a wrestling dual meet against rival Terre Haute South. Amy Borgnini — the only girl on either team’s roster — got that thrilling victory. By 2006, Borgnini earned a spot on the U.S. national women’s team.
By the 2020-21 school year, more than two dozen girls were on Wabash Valley high school wrestling teams, including 13 at Northview. Gradually, there were enough girls involved statewide to allow females to wrestle against each other. Torie Buchanan of West Vigo, Terre Haute North’s Sophia Buechner and Northview’s Varzidy Batchelor won individual state championships. Still, their postseason tournament was not yet sanctioned by the Indiana High School Athletic Association.
The IHSAA did, though, add girls wrestling to its “emerging sport process” in 2022, along with boys volleyball.
Now, the door is fully opened.
The IHSAA Board of Directors recently approved full recognition of girls wrestling beginning with the upcoming 2024-25 school year, along with boys volleyball. The sports most recently given full recognition by the IHSAA were unified flag football (2018) and unified track and field (2013), as part of the association’s partnership with Special Olympics, and boys and girls soccer in 1994.
The IHSAA said girls wrestling, as well as boys volleyball, “have seen significant growth over the last 24 months.” Indeed, more than 1,400 girls at 177 different Hoosier high schools competed in wrestling in the 2023-24 school year, according to IHSAA figures. (Wrestlers from Columbus East and Jennings County high schools competed in the state meet earlier this year.)
Girls wrestling advanced quicker elsewhere in the nation. Indiana was one of only five states that had not yet sanctioned girls wrestling championships, according to National Federation of State High School Associations statistics cited in a USA Today report.
Nationwide, the number of high school girls wrestling teams quadrupled through the past decade, and the number of individual female wrestlers has quintupled to more than 50,000, the Associated Press reported. That marks a phenomenal increase. In 1990, barely 100 girls wrestled for high school teams throughout the entire U.S.
The explosion includes numerous Wabash Valley girls, and several have earned special distinctions. Two West Vigo Vikings won the prestigious McMillan Award as Vigo County’s best female athletes overall — Annalyse Dooley and Buchanan. No doubt, more honors are ahead for female wrestlers in west-central Indiana.
The sport is both exhausting and welcoming. It requires peak physical fitness, but also offers a chance for competitors of any size. Wrestlers compete according to weight classes. A singlet uniform and wrestling shoes are the only necessary equipment, so the sport is affordable.
Best of all, wrestling’s openness will now become complete as Hoosier girls compete against each other for IHSAA state championships, just as their male counterparts have done for decades. That opportunity is overdue.
