Local girls’ wrestling community is ‘excited’ about NCAA’s adding women’s wrestling as a championship sport

Julissa Ortiz is about business, and her business — for years — has been wrestling.

So when the Mariana Bracetti Academy junior, who reached the final of the PIAA girls’ wrestling championships, learned that the NCAA had added women’s wrestling as its 91st championship sport, she smiled but then quickly got back to work.

“It wasn’t shocking to me because I knew wrestling was growing as a sport for women,” Ortiz, 17, said during practice last week. “I was more just really happy because the time had finally come.”

Last year, Ortiz finished second in the inaugural PIAA girls’ wrestling championships in Hershey. In 2023, she became the first girl to win a Public League wrestling championship. Last Saturday, she advanced to the 124-pound final at the PIAA meet before dropping a 17-3 decision to Neve O’Byrne of Garnet Valley.

Ortiz was about 7 when her older sister, Tatyana, was a freshman wrestler at Mariana Bracetti in 2016 and inadvertently forced the Catholic League to amend a rule regarding girls wrestling boys.

By the time Ortiz reached high school, wrestling became more of a passion. The opportunity to compete in college increased her desire to improve.

“Once it became an actual sport for women [in college],” she said, “I knew that I would be able to compete after high school, and I’m really excited about that.”

» READ MORE: This ‘sweet’ gesture helped ease her friend’s grief over missing out on the PIAA girls’ wrestling championship

So far, Ortiz is being recruited by one Division I school.

In January, NCAA officials announced that women from Divisions I, II, and III would compete for championships beginning in 2026.

Local coaches and athletes from high schools, middle schools, and colleges recognize the doors the sport may open and how the sport likely will evolve, while others see a need to ensure that the sport grows in various communities.

Upper Perkiomen wrestling coach Omar Porrata was reluctant to coach girls when the school started its program last season.

“Now, it was definitely one of the best things that’s happened,” he said.

Porrata said the sport saved him from a difficult childhood and sent him to college, where he became a standout at Millersville University. He now looks forward to the sport changing the lives of the middle and high school athletes he coaches. He has about 25 total, including the seven high schoolers who helped generate interest within the middle school.

“It gives them something to strive for,” he said. “I think it’s been an incredible journey the last two years with girls’ wrestling, and I just can’t wait to see what the next few years bring.”

Temple sophomore Natalie Mason shares similar sentiments. Mason, 21, didn’t start wrestling until she was a high school senior in Maryland, where she was the only girl on the squad. Back then, it was just something to do before lacrosse season.

After studying for a year at a community college near her home, Mason transferred to Temple and stumbled across a wrestling sign-up sheet for the school’s club team.

This week, Mason and several teammates will compete in the National Collegiate Wrestling Championships in Shreveport, La.

“I had no intentions of ever wrestling again after high school,” she said. “But it makes you feel good mentally and physically. And just to know that living in the city, you can maybe defend yourself a little bit more, it’s been a great learning experience. I meet all these different people that have this mental [resilience] because they wrestle.”

The goal, Mason said, is for Temple’s program to join the NCAA. Temple’s coach, Matt McConnell, once coached Julissa and Tatyana Ortiz. Mason sparred with Ortiz last Tuesday at MBA, on Torresdale Avenue, so both could stay sharp.

“We all support each other,” Mason said. “It’s a really nice community.”

When Steve Soto, coach at Mariana Bracetti, started at the school in 2020, Ortiz was the only girl on the team. A year later, a few more joined but didn’t last, Soto thinks, because they had to wrestle against boys.

A girl’s focus when wrestling a more experienced boy, Soto said, often was just to not get pinned, which would lose her team points.

That dilemma was solved last year when the PIAA sanctioned girls’ wrestling. With a separate sport, girls now can employ more strategy, Soto said, and gain more knowledge about the sport.

» READ MORE: What was the first season of Pa.-sanctioned girls’ wrestling like? Let the people involved tell you.

He also suggested that as more women wrestle in college, more might then become youth coaches, which, he said, the sport also needs.

“I think you’ll see a lot more growth,” Soto said. “I think we’re not even touching the surface yet.”

Mike Rahming is ecstatic about the opportunities that women’s wrestling will afford.

His daughter, Samiyah, a junior at Northeast High School, won a District 12 championship in February and competed in the state tournament last week. His son, Nasir, also wrestled at Northeast. Another daughter, Sanaa, qualified for the 12-and-under Keystone Regionals last month.

But Rahming, the wrestling coach at West Philadelphia High School, also sees barriers that still keep some away.

“I just don’t want it to be an opportunity that young people, young women, and particularly those from our community, miss out on because there’s a lack of marketing and awareness where it’s needed,” he said in a phone interview.

Rahming believes more parents should be educated on the benefits of wrestling before children reach high school.

“If we posit [wrestling] as a benefit that helps you get to college,” he said, “but for years you’ve been conditioning girls to stay away from combat sports, I don’t think that it would suddenly all just click for your daughter in ninth grade.”

Stigma, he said, still exists in the Black community when it comes to wrestling, for example.

That’s why Rahming advocates for schools, recreation centers, and others to educate people on the benefits the sport provides when children are younger.

Instead of girls fighting over scholarships in ultracompetitive and oversaturated sports such as basketball, he says, perhaps wrestling offers another avenue.

“This is only the beginning,” he said. “Now we have to market it.

“We need to have ‘try-it nights,’ and we need schools and the recreation centers and local politicians involved. We have to get the word out. Then, as that wheel starts to turn, we’ll be able to get our folks pointed in the right direction for high school and college.”