Over recent years women’s sports have gained greater attention. Women’s wrestling in particular has seen massive growth at the collegiate and high school levels.
The NCAA has projected it will hold its first women’s wrestling championship in 2026. More and more colleges are adding the sport, including UW-Stevens Point. Likewise, more states are sponsoring the high school sport. Including the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, who is building up to a team state tournament in 2026-27.
In Wisconsin, according to WI Wrestle, nearly 500 more girls participated in high school wrestling in 2023-24 than 2022-23. Lodi High School, which has a rich history in boys’ wrestling, is looking to become part of the movement.
It’s not just having more girls participate in wrestling, it’s creating teams for girls only. Everywhere from kindergarten to high school.
“I think for women’s wrestling to grow it needs to be separate, boys and girls,” said Lodi High School wrestling head coach Cody Endres. “I don’t think you’re going to find too many people that would argue that.”
Endres, who teaches at Lodi Elementary School, knows the importance of a girls only team well. One day in 2022 while discussing wrestling, a girl in class asked why there wasn’t a girls’ team. Endres pointed out girls can wrestle on the boys’ team, as they currently do, but that wasn’t enough for this student.
“She goes, ‘I’m not wrestling with boys, they’re gross,’” Endres recalled.
He asked about if there was a girls’ only team. She said she’d be all in. And so, the journey to creating programs for girls to wrestle became a priority.
“I sat down one night and had some deep thoughts with my wife,” Endres said. “I was just like, ‘We’re only offering this to only half of the students in Lodi, that’s just so wrong. We know how awesome this sport can be, why is this not an opportunity for every single person?’”
Soon following, a girls’ only K-12 wrestling program was created through Lodi CREW, although that was no easy task either.
Just years prior there was one girl, compared to 200 boys, in all of K-12 involved in wrestling. Endres had to do some convincing that the program would draw enough girls, at least 10.
“We didn’t get 10, we didn’t get 20, we got almost 40 girls,” Endres said. “What’s the difference? It was just for girls.”
Now, girls have the chance to wrestle in their own programs, away from the boys. Lodi coaches know that when a team is open to only girls their numbers are likely to continue to grow.
“It’s almost everything [for girls to have their own team],” former state champion and current coach Zach Licht said.
Currently, Lodi High School only fields a boys’ wrestling team. Title IX allows a gender to participate on another gender’s team if there is not one of their own. Katie Frey, Marah Lane and Zoe Licht took that opportunity last season, wrestling with the boys.
Zach Licht, Zoe’s older brother, spent last season as what Endres called a “defacto girls coach,” helping out the three participating on the boys’ team. At the beginning of the season, Zach Licht noticed the girls seeming to be disconnected.
“The boys were so advanced they kind of fell behind on the technique so it was really hard for them to get caught up with that,” Licht said. “I was like, ‘Well, why don’t I go over there and teach them the basics so they have at least a background of what to do.’”
Coaching may become easier when a girls’ only team arrives at the high school. Two teams would give coaches the space to not have to worry about talking over each other while teaching two separate groups.
As Lodi High School looks to add a girls’ wrestling team there are steps that need to be taken.
“We’ll need to survey nine, 10, 11, 12th grade families to see what the interest level would be [in creating a girls’ only team],” Lodi High School principal Joe Jelinek said. “If administration and coaches support that then we would give that info to the board of education, the board of education can make a decision.”
The survey is expected to go out in July. The goal is to have 10 high school girls interested in wrestling, a standard number for creating a new sport. If a girls’ only team is added then a paid coach can come in. From there it’s logistics that stand as hurdles.
While the facilities already exist, they are small and couldn’t support two practices at once. The boys’ and the girls’ coaches would have to work together to coordinate facilities use.
Money would be needed for tournaments, new uniforms, among other expenses.
“There’s a lot of hurdles and probably challenging moments ahead, but it’s so worth it to give these girls the opportunities that they deserve,” Endres said.
Of the girls already participating in high school, they are a great foundation for a program to build on. Zoe Licht, who was the lone girl in Lodi wrestling two years ago, was on Team Wisconsin, which took second in the nation. Marah Lane has the personality of someone who can recruit classmates to join the team.
Their foundation, paired with the excitement of the coaching staff to start a girls’ only team, make for a great opportunity for Lodi High School to officially sponsor a girls’ only wrestling team.
“For our girls that come in, that’s such an advantage, it’s not some mom or some dad who doesn’t have a lot of background knowledge, these are vested coaches,” Endres said.
Wrestling has been popular for a long time in Lodi, a point of pride for the Blue Devils. Right now, there is a great opportunity for that point of pride to grow to be all encompassing of boys and girls.
“My goal is just numbers right now,” Zach Licht said. “Get as many girls to enjoy the sport and love it as much as the boys do.”
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