BY MARK MORING, Eastern Shore Post, Dec. 5, 2025
About two dozen girls made state high school history this week in Oak Hall when Arcadia and Nandua met on the wrestling mat.
Beginning this year, girls wrestling is now a fully sanctioned varsity sport in Virginia, and a number of young women from the two schools squared off on Wednesday evening. (Results weren’t available in time for our deadline.)
“I’m excited,” says Stephanie Cruz-Vargas, a senior who has been on Nandua’s team for three years. “It’s big for us girls as a team and for girls all over the state.”
In May, the Virginia High School League (VHSL) officially approved the sport’s new status after three years as an “emerging sport,” a test period to see if it was viable.
Turns out it’s more than viable. It’s exploding. In the 2022-23 winter season, there were 273 female wrestlers in Virginia. The next year, more than 400. And last year, 631.
Statewide numbers aren’t yet available for this year, but Mike McCall, spokesman for the VHSL, noted the “significant increase in participation over the past three years” as a big reason for sanctioning the sport. He said he expects the numbers to keep increasing.
Forty-six states had sanctioned girls wrestling before this year, making Virginia one of the last to make it official.
“Having it finally sanctioned in Virginia is amazing,” says Nandua coach Nathan Metzger, who has about 20 girls on his roster, one of the largest in the state. “It is opening doors to student-athletes across the state who may have been hesitant to join before, having to wrestle against boys.”
And that’s just as big a deal as the change to an official varsity sport. Until now, girls have often had to wrestle against boys at other schools if there was no opposing girl available in their weight class.
EASTERN SHORE POST/MARK MORING // Seniors Yaritza Lopez-Martinez (top) and Yazmin Gomez have been on Arcadia’s team since their freshman season.
“We’ve been wrestling against guys who are bigger and stronger than us,” says Arcadia senior Yazmin Gomez, on the team since her freshman season. “So it’s a big change.”
Firebird teammate Yaritza Lopez-Mendez, a senior who has also wrestled all four years, agrees.
“When I started off as a freshman, I had to go against all guys,” she says. “And a lot of them were really strong. I was like, maybe this sport isn’t for me. But I kept going.”
With each passing year, girls were competing against fewer guys and more and more against other girls. Now that it’s a sanctioned sport, girls will only wrestle against girls. If the opposing team doesn’t have a girl in a particular weight class, they can no longer put in a boy. From now on, it’s just boys against boys and girls against girls.
While the girls are happy about that, these trailblazers also wear their past matches against boys as sort of a badge of honor.
“A lot of people just think this is a male-dominant sport and that there’s certain things us girls can’t do,” says Nandua junior Estreita Vicente-Gomez. “But I feel like us girls, we really can. If we really want to do something, we will get it done.”
Arcadia’s Gomez says that for years, girls — and society in general — believed that wrestling was “something that girls probably never thought they could do. So we’re trying to prove them wrong. Girls can also do it.”
In its three years as an emerging sport in Virginia, unofficial state tournaments were held annually. But with its new status as a sanctioned sport, girls wrestling will have officially sanctioned state tournaments.
“I’m really glad they made the change,” says Arcadia coach Rick Wetzel. “The girls are really excited about it, and so am I.”
Having an official state tournament, in addition to the opportunity to wrestle against girls only, will likely bring even more girls to the sport. And current wrestlers like Lopez-Mendez will help with the recruiting.
“I just go up to random girls at school and say, ‘You look like a wrestler. You should join the team,’” she says. “I hope more and more girls will have the courage to say, ‘If she can do it, I could do it, too.’
“I just want them to join a sport that’s really fun.”
