The one elusive goal for women's wrestlers is nearly within reach
Kennedy Blades won a silver medal in freestyle wrestling at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Sage Mortimer has represented the U.S. at the world championships for the sport. They are two of the best women wrestlers in the country, but there's an achievement neither woman has: an NCAA championship.
The reason? Starting in 1928, the NCAA wrestling championship was a men-only club. That will change in the spring of 2026. Next March, the NCAA will hold championships for women's wrestling in Divisions I, II and III.
'I've accomplished so many goals in my life. I even went to the Olympics, but being an NCAA champ is obviously a goal that a lot of you know athletes have growing up,' said Blades, a junior at Iowa who wrestles at 160 pounds. 'The fact that I have the opportunity to make that dream come true next year? I'm just super stoked.'
For this year, the women will continue to participate at the National Collegiate Women's Wrestling Championships. The best of the sport will head to Coralville, Iowa, for a tournament Friday and Saturday that will decide the national champions.
But next season, the women will get to participate in a tournament that should have more publicity, fans and will have the NCAA running it. The tournament will look more like the men's event, as well as the other 90 championships the NCAA runs every year.
'It's super cool to have been a part of wrestling throughout all its development. It's gone from almost no girl wrestlers in the sport when I started. It's really cool to see how far it's come, and I'm still a part of this growth, because it's grown so fast,' said Mortimer, a 110-pound. wrestler for Grand Valley State.
Jake Short, the women's wrestling coach at Grand Valley State in Michigan, wrestled at Minnesota, and qualified for the NCAA championships three times. He knows what a special tournament the NCAAs are, and how it brings together the wrestling world like nothing else.
'They've heard me say it 100 times. The NCAA tournament is the greatest tournament on earth. You know you can wrestle for things that may be considered larger, world championships, things like that. But nothing compares to that feeling of having the arena packed. You know, everybody's there, everybody's wrestling,' Short said.
Women wanting to wrestle is not new. United World Wrestling, the sport's international governing body, introduced women's championships in 1987. In 2004, women's wrestling was a part of the Olympic program for the first time. Despite pioneers like Tricia Saunders pushing for more opportunities, collegiate opportunities for women were rare.
However, in 2017, Presbyterian College in South Carolina added the first Division I team. A total of 39 programs were wrestling across the country at this point, but the Blue Hose brought the first Division I team. By June 2020, the NCAA added women's wrestling to the Emerging Sports in Women program.
In 2021, the sport saw another huge boost. Iowa added women's wrestling to its roster of sports. The Hawkeyes have 24 men's national championships, and it's a school synonymous with wrestling greatness. They hired Clarissa Chun, a 2012 Olympic bronze medalist, to lead the program, and she quickly turned it into a powerhouse. Schools continued to add women's wrestling teams. Then in January, the NCAA made the announcement women's wrestling advocates had been hoping for. The sport would have an NCAA championship in 2026.
Short wondered what took so long.
'I thought it was long overdue,' he said. 'I've been around wrestling my entire life, and I've been fortunate enough to be coached by phenomenal coaches. I've wrestled at one of the highest levels you can wrestle in collegiate wrestling. And I've seen how to train. The work ethic that I see on the women's side? There's no difference.'
Wrestling was one of the few sports in the NCAA that didn't have a women's equivalent, but this brings women closer to equality.
'This is probably the last barrier for Iowa women's wrestling,' Blades said. 'We have pretty much everything the guys have. We have the opportunity to wrestle at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, we have the same gear as them, even train in the same wrestling room. So all we were just waiting for [was] this opportunity for NCAA to really establish women's wrestling as a sport. Now we'll be able to even compete, maybe on the same mats as them.
'This is what people who fought for women's athletes to have the same as men do. This is what they fought for.'
Both Blades and Mortimer came up through youth wrestling programs that had few opportunities just for girls. They wrestled boys. In 2016, Blades became the first girl in the Illinois Kids Wrestling Federation to win a novice title. When she returned to an IKWF tournament recently, she saw girls brackets in different weight classes. Meanwhile, Mortimer's 7-year-old sister wrestled in a bracket with 15 girls at her weight class.
And now, those girls can dream of winning NCAA titles. Mortimer and Blades dream of winning those titles, too, and perhaps becoming the first-ever NCAA champions in wrestling.
'I set my goals super high,' Mortimer said. 'My goals are obviously world champion-focused and Olympics- focused, but having these milestones along the way of being a national champion, it's something that's really important to me, and it's also a lot of fun to pursue these goals.'
Blades hopes to add an NCAA title to her trophy case, too, though she will have only one opportunity as she will be a senior in 2025-26.
'You're only in college for so long, so that's what makes NCAA so unique in every sport,' Blades said. 'I'm just super, super grateful to all these women athletes and wrestlers that came before me. You know, they broke these barriers so we can have the opportunity to have this NCAA championship.'
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