D1 adds women to emerging sports

[IronChef 637]

Will any teams add women's wrestling, especially in the current financial environment? Presbyterian is the only school with a team, and their announcement a couple of years ago did not spur any other teams to get on board. Tom Brands got a lot of press for writing a letter 3 years ago, but it doesn't seem like Iowa is close to adding a team even now (not that it's his decision).

 

The sport has grown rapidly at the college level, but D1 has, with a single exception, decided to sit this one out.

[Luke The Drifter 3]

I think now you will see smaller division one college add men’s and women’s programs . Private colleges with small enrollment are ideal to add. They want/need students adding 60 students (30 men /30 women) at Private school tuition (let’s say 50,000) with following the Presbyterian model of three coaches it would be a win for the colleges to add.

[Katie 710]

I believe I saw an article saying that at the high school level, girls’ wrestling is growing fast. Hopefully that translates to more college programs in the future. 

Edited June 18 by Katie

[gimpeltf 1,278]

50 minutes ago, Katie said:

I believe I saw an article saying that at the high school level, girls’ wrestling is growing fast. Hopefully that translates to more college programs in the future. 

26 states have approved. NJ was the 12th- less than 2 years ago.

[Pinnum 780]

If you want more D1 schools, you need to get D2 schools to add.  
 

When there are few members they combine D2 and D1 into one division (see ice hockey and men’s volleyball ).  
 

When D1 schools see that they already have the facilities due to men’s wrestling and that there are schools they consider inferior to them winning NCAA titles, they will be more inclined to sponsor the sport.

Schools (especially Stanford) really care about the directors cup And women’s wrestling could be a good way to get more points. 

[gowrestle 629]

No problem with the addition of women’s wrestling but I will have no more interest in watching the ladies grapple than I do watching girls play basketball. 

[Jim L 214]

1 minute ago, gowrestle said:

No problem with the addition of women’s wrestling but I will have no more interest in watching the ladies grapple than I do watching girls play basketball. 

I would rather watch women grapple than men play BBall.  By a large margin. Men,s wreslting is my #1 sport to watch and then possibly NFL with any grappling style (Olympic wreslting, BJJ, Judo. etc, male or female) next.

 

[Jim L 214]

I will add that the main reason I find men's wrestling more interesting is that I know the athletes better.  I would probably favor watching US National/Olympic women's wrestling over DII teams that I have no familiarity with. 

[TexRef 54]

There is another D1 team and that is Lock Haven. I hope they start to take it seriously though. Last season they had 1 girl and only 1 event, an exhibition match. 

I hope that more girls will want to wrestle in college. As of now it appears that the market is flooded,  because there are not enough girls to go around to all of these programs.  

[SetonHallPirate 780]

13 minutes ago, TexRef said:

There is another D1 team and that is Lock Haven. I hope they start to take it seriously though. Last season they had 1 girl and only 1 event, an exhibition match. 

I hope that more girls will want to wrestle in college. As of now it appears that the market is flooded,  because there are not enough girls to go around to all of these programs.  

Lock Haven would compete in Division II for women's wrestling if it grew to that point.

[TexRef 54]

SetonHallPirate-Thanks for that clarification. I hope they get serious about the program or just cut it. Having 1 girl on the roster and 1 event is not a good way to start a program. The WCWA requires a team have at least 6 girls on a team for the season to be eligible for the WCWA Nationals. I know that LH is an NCAA school but for now those schools are going WCWA.