Top 5 Stories in Women’s Wrestling: FloWrestling Makes Moves, 2020-2021 Starting to Take Shape
Ashly Gomez toes the line for Ferrum at the Missouri Valley Open in the fall of 2018. She has since transferred to King.
by Derek Levendusky, AWW Staff
Twitter: @AWWderek
What’s going on in women’s wrestling lately? Here’s the top 5 storylines (in no particular order).
1. FloWrestling adding marquee women’s matches to October’s Who’s #1 event.
FloWrestling continues to add some women’s star power to the card of their prestigious high school event in October, Who’s #1, announcing two big matches in the last few weeks. Though they published today that world bronze medalist Amit Elor will not be cleared in time to compete against rising star Kennedy Blades at this year’s event, they have added the exciting matchups of 2019 Cadet world teamer Sage Mortimer vs. 2x Fargo champion Mia Palumbo and Cadet World silver medalist Skylar Hattendorf vs. 2019 Cadet World bronze medalist Kylie Welker.
Utah’s Mortimer is currently ranked #1 at 100 in the most recent USAW/FloWrestling poll and Illinois-based Palumbo is #1 at 106. Mortimer was a 2018 & 2019 Fargo champ, and also became famous for becoming the first-ever female to gain All-American honors in a boys’ division at Fargo, placing 7th in Greco in 2018. Palumbo, who hails from the powerhouse wrestling state Illinois, doubled up at Fargo in 2018, winning the Cadet & Junior divisions. She spent much of 2019 recovering from hip surgery and a knee injury, but got back on the mat in November of 2019 to regain her #1 ranking at 106.
Skylar Hattendorf made her small state of New Hampshire proud as she burst on the scene in 2019 to gain a #1 ranking at 132 and win a silver medal at Cadet Worlds. Wisconsin’s Kylie Welker, ranked #1 at 144, was also on the Cadet world team in 2019, and brought home a bronze medal.
2. AWW partnering as freelancer with FloWrestling.
Wrestling media giant FloWrestling reached out to American Women’s Wrestling to invite us to freelance for women’s wrestling in the upcoming high school, college, and senior level season by producing previews and recaps of major events. Currently planned coverage will include events that FloWresting streams like Final X, WCWAs, USAW Women's Nationals, Fargo and Super 32, and a few other events like the World Championships, the Olympic Team Trials, and the Olympics. AWW founder-staff writer Derek Levendusky will be writing articles. AWW will also collaborate to produce rankings for high school and senior level women. High school rankings will be done in concert with USA Wrestling and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
3. Women’s wrestling officially an NCAA Emerging Sport.
Though the vote passed earlier this year to add women’s wrestling as an NCAA Emerging Sport, it was official on August 1st. The NCAA needs 40 programs to move toward implementing a national NCAA championship and with Pennsylvania’s Alvernia University recently announcing a new program, that brings the current total to #39. To have multi-divisional NCAA championships at the D1, D2 & D3 levels, each level would have to have 40 programs in their own division.
4. College wrestling seasons looking to be one-semester sport this year.
Both the NAIA & NCAA made announcements within the last month, the NCAA more recently, that fall sports championships will be moved to the spring, with the exception of football. Though women’s college wrestling programs are afforded some latitude due to the self-governing nature of the movement (though that is certainly in flux with Emerging Sport Status), all seem to be following suit with their future governing bodies and campus policies.
The NAIA Council of Presidents (COP) voted on July 28th to move national championships in cross country, men's soccer, women's soccer, and women's volleyball to spring 2021. This decision, however, would still allow NAIA conferences to compete in the fall and winter, if they chose to do so. This affects women’s wrestling as it creates a model for how other sports are being handled within the NAIA.
The NAIA website reported that the COP Chair and University of St. Francis President Dr. Arvid Johnson said, “Given the fast-paced and constantly-changing nature of the current environment, the COP recognized that the likelihood of safely completing the fall sports season has decreased significantly. This decision allows conferences to consider the regional impact of COVID-19 when determining the appropriate time for regular season competition."
The NCAA decision came later, but is similar. On August 5th, both D2 & D3 announced that they cancelled all fall championships. In D1, the LA Times reported on August 21st that “the NCAA Division I Board of Directors felt they had no choice but to postpone all fall championships, as NCAA President Mark Emmert said would be the case earlier this month. The board made it official Friday when it announced in a statement that it will ‘work toward hosting scaled back fall championships in the spring.’”
As an aside, on July 22, according to the NCAA website, the D2 Administrative Committee approved waivers to allow D2 student-athletes “to retain the use of a season of competition if their team completes 50% or less of the sport’s Bylaw 17 maximum contests/dates of competition for the 2020-21 academic year.”
5. Senior Nationals scheduled for October 9-11 in Coralville, Iowa.
The wrestling community is already starting to talk about potential match-ups when senior level athletes return to the mat for Senior Nationals, set to be in Iowa in October. This will be the first major senior level event since the pandemic shut down the competitive wrestling schedule.
Some questions have surrounded this event regarding qualifications, how it plays into Olympic Team Trials, what this means for last year’s qualifiers, etc. The USA Wrestling site dedicated to the event states, “In the event that UWW keeps the 2020 Senior World Championships on the calendar and USA Wrestling plans to send teams, this event will most likely serve as our 2020 Senior World Team Trials.”
As the U.S. event currently only has the 6 Olympic weights, it raises questions about whether Worlds this year in Belgrade, Serbia will also only feature the 6 Olympic weights, and what USA Wrestling will do if Worlds features the typical 10 weight classes that are standard in a non-Olympic year.