I wrestled 103 lbs for 4 years which is the lowest or near lowest (96 lbs in NY state) weight class in high school. Most girls who wrestle tend to be on the lighter end of the spectrum so despite wrestling for an all boy's school, I've seen a decent amount of girls wrestle and I've probably wrestled 5-10 over my career.

Frankly, the universal feeling is that it's a losing situation. If you win, you beat up a girl. If you lost, you just lost to a girl.

And there were a lot of losses. Since there are generally only 1 -3 girls at tournaments people pay attention, and lightweight wrestling is usually where you have a very new freshman going against a junior-senior girl, there is an experience difference added with the uncontrolled adrenaline of teenage boy there is a lot of variability tossed into this match and there are numerous times where you see some kid 5-10 points up only to get tossed for a 5 point move to an upset pin.

Did I mention that everyone is watching? No one wants to be that guy. One of the most memorable matches that I’ve watched at a large 20 team tournament was a 103 lb match between a freshman boy and this gangly girl. Huge strength mismatch and very quickly the girl was down. All of the sudden, she hits a 5 point throw to take the lead at the end of the period. The boy (did I mention freshman teenager?) throws a huge temper tantrum which a) caught the attention of everyone who wasn't paying attention to the match, b) meant that he was already more irrational than he was before. Match proceeds and a very angry kid slowly uses his strength advantage to gain back the lead ONLY TO GET THROWN YET AGAIN! Which leads to more people watching the match and the kid throwing yet another temper tantrum, which naturally turns the crowd against him. His coach steps in, yells: "You deserve to lose, get yourself together" which leads to a fantastically tense final period with everyone cheering for this stick-figure girl to hit another throw while a freakishly nervous boy tries to crawl his way back to victory. Unfortunately brawn won out and the boy pulled out a win but valuable lessons were learned:

Don't fuck around while wrestling girls. THEY ARE PINNING MACHINES.

While girls have a huge strength disadvantage, I've talked to several girls about this and they do have a few physical things that work out in their favor:

• They have gumby arms. It's nearly impossible to put in any legal armbar or nelson since their shoulders regularly tend to pop out without them ever noticing and virtually anything that you can do is considered illegal.
• Because of their bizarrely weird flexibility they are freakishly difficult to pin.
• While they float around 12% body fat vs. the male 7% and they have to work much harder to lose weight (thanks biology *fist shake), their fluctuations are much more stable and they don't really gain that much either.
• Their hips are built lower to the ground which allows them to get lower in the point of attack. This also means that they can set up throws much easier.
• With lower hips, they can sprawl much quicker. One girl I chatted with mentioned that she found it much easier to get a leg attack on a guy than a girl.
• While the hips make them easier to ride (this is the technical term, don't judge me!), it also means that they can just as easily ride the crap out of you.

Cody Pfau becoming the first girl to win a match at the Colorado State Championships using a single leg ride with a half nelson

My youngest brother was a 2 time New England Champion and All-American. The other team knew who they were going up against and they had the option of tossing out their normal starter and gamble on pulling out a win or putting in the girl, accept defeat but maybe prevent the pin. They put out the girl and she pulled a Rocky losing 15-0 by technical fall but by going the distance, prevented the pin giving my team only 5 points rather than the optimal 6 points for a fall. The other team won the moral victory.

My senior year in 2004, there was this one girl who freak pinned her way into the regional finals in my weigh class and everyone was horrified about drawing her at New Englands. Around that time, you started hearing about girls around the country qualifying for the state tournaments. People probably really started paying attention when Deanna Rix won 100 matches and was 4 seconds away from winning the Maine 130lb title

Deanna Rix: Getting another win at Fargo Nationals

Finally in 2006 Michaela Hutchison won the Alaskan state title after being the runner-up the year before.

Which now gets us into the "ewww, I have to touch a girl, they have cooties" thing. As discussed in Wrestling: Do college wrestlers ever consider there can be something sexual in it?

Getting ready to wrestle is preparing to go to war for your team against an opponent who is also preparing for battle. Your thoughts are pretty much focused on inflicting pain and suffering via physical chess. If you're not very good, the thoughts are focused on how do you get through this match without letting your team down.

Once you're on the mat you're so focused that it really doesn't matter who you're wrestling (aside the technical/strategic adjustments you have to make as described above). Your opponent is the opponent.

There are some downsides to having girls on the mat. Like any time you put a new wrestler into a match, you really don't know how they are going to response. The fear might catch up to them and they may completely freak out as they attempt to crawl their way to safety. One of the most horrific things you can watch is new wrestler go against an experience one and they immediately start screaming bloody murder while the other wrestler is desperately trying to put them out of their misery. Watching girls go through this is even more painful. There are occasional issues where a girl will complain about groping but frankly, it's pretty darn difficult to not accidentally touch something since it is a grappling sport.

But generally most girls understand what they have signed up for and there are several examples of girls excelling in this sport.

As a personal point of experience, in college, I wrestled Olympic Bronze medalist Patricia Miranda while she was in Law School as her throwing dummy to get her ready for the 2008 US Olympic Trials. I probably had one successful takedown over the 3 years.

P.S. I just found out that my high-school aged cousin decided continue that family legacy to sign up for wrestling and will be in the California girl league.

Footnotes