Women Want to Wrestle; Small Colleges Oblige
On the New York Times
By KATIE THOMAS
Published: May 27, 2008
Women’s wrestling teams are sprouting in the most unlikely places.
Tani Ader of Honolulu will attend Jamestown College in North Dakota because it has a women’s wrestling program.
In its first season, Oklahoma City University finished second at the women’s wrestling national championships with the help of Lacey Novinska, left.
Missouri Baptist University, a small Christian liberal arts institution, is starting a team this fall. Oklahoma City University, the alma mater of three Miss Americas, began a program in 2007. And Menlo College near San Francisco, which specializes in business management and where nearly two-thirds of the students are men, has had a women’s wrestling team since 2001.
The growth of such an unconventional women’s sport at these small, private institutions has little to do with the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX and everything to do with their bottom line. Officials at tuition-hungry colleges say women’s wrestling is an untapped market of prospective students, one that has curiously been all but ignored by bigger universities.
The inclusion of women’s wrestling in the Olympics beginning in 2004 provided a huge boost to the sport’s popularity and credibility. Five thousand girls nationwide wrestled in high school in the 2006-7 academic year, yet only eight colleges offer it as a varsity sport. Three of those eight programs are starting this fall.
Rosters fill up nearly as quickly as colleges create teams. “When we can get so many girls to come here for a first-year program, that’s 20 to 25 extra students who normally wouldn’t have looked at Jamestown College,” said Cisco Cole, the women’s wrestling coach there.
Jamestown, a 1,000-student private liberal arts college in North Dakota, has one of the three new women’s wrestling programs. Seventeen wrestlers, including four from Hawaii, have enrolled. Tani Ader, a three-time state champion from Honolulu, said the chance to continue wrestling propelled her across the Pacific.
“I really want to wrestle, and wrestling in college is like the first step in going to the Olympics,” said Ader, who received partial athletic and academic scholarships.
Despite wrestling’s growth among small colleges, there is concern over why larger institutions have not followed suit. More obscure sports like squash and synchronized swimming have been officially recognized as “emerging sports” for women by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, but wrestling has not made the seven-sport list.
Pacific University in Oregon is the only N.C.A.A. member that offers varsity women’s wrestling. The other varsity programs belong to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which oversees smaller colleges. A smattering of women compete on N.C.A.A. men’s varsity teams.
Counterintuitive as it may sound, one of the major impediments to the growth of women’s wrestling at larger universities, some argue, is Title IX. Colleges have struggled for decades to ensure that female athletic participation is proportional to women’s enrollment. But some critics say that the law hurts women’s wrestling because it tempts colleges to bypass sports with small rosters — wrestling typically fields about 20 to 30 women — in favor of sports like rowing, with teams of up to 60 members.
“The college-level development is our missing link,” said Patricia Miranda, 28, who won a bronze medal in wrestling at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and hopes to compete in the Beijing Games this summer. She competed on the men’s team at Stanford. “I’m not saying it’s a weak link, it’s a missing link.”
High school participation has increased more than threefold from a decade ago, when 1,600 girls wrestled during the 1996-97 school year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. The sport has grown fastest in Hawaii, Texas and Washington — states that created separate state championships for girls, according to USA Wrestling, the national governing body.
Terry Steiner, USA Wrestling’s women’s national coach, said the prospect of the Olympics was one of the main reasons more girls were competing. “I think there’s a future now,” Steiner said.
More high school girls participate in wrestling than in archery or equestrian, which have been officially recognized as “emerging sports” by the N.C.A.A. At least 10 N.C.A.A. member colleges must express interest in a program and at least 20 must offer it as a varsity or competitive club team before a sport can be classified as emerging.
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Oliver Salud wrote "Women Want to Wrestle; Small Colleges Oblige" on June 6, 2008. This post has 
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