By Josh Perry || HockomockSports.com Managing Editor
The best wrestlers in the Hockomock League gathered at Stoughton High on Saturday for a day’s worth of competition in the hopes of earning the title of Hockomock champion. On Thursday, Stoughton coach Andrew Iverson announced that, for the first time, the league was adding a showcase for girls wrestlers at the league’s championship meet.
It is an acknowledgement of how the sport has expanded in recent years. According to multiple reports (and something noted by each of the coaches and wrestlers spoken to for this story), girls wrestling is the fastest-growing sport in the country across all levels, from youth to high school to college. The NCAA recently announced women’s wrestling as the 91st official championship sport, starting in 2026.
“Adding a Hockomock girls tournament would be the next step,” said Stoughton senior Angie Berry last week. “Girls dual meets are definitely awesome. Even doing a Davenport versus Kelley-Rex dual meet, just because the numbers are still low, I think that would be an awesome opportunity. Being a Hock champ would be really cool.”
Oliver Ames senior Amaya Smith added, “We want to make it as inclusive as possible, but the league could focus on giving the girls their own spotlight. I think it would allow more girls to take it seriously as a girls sport rather than joining a boys sport.”
Nearly all of the 11 teams in the league have at least one girl in the program. Coaches are adapting, schedules are growing with more girls-only tournaments (like Stoughton’s Toughtown Tournament) or separate divisions for the girls to compete against each other (like at OA’s Devin Ness Tournament), and the league highlighted that growth with Saturday’s 12-match showcase.
Building bonds with new teammates in a new sport
It is never easy to try a new sport. Walking into a room of people, many of them older, many of them already friends, and trying to find your niche is difficult and rarely happens right away. It takes time to prove yourself and build relationships with your new teammates. That challenge is amplified when you’re the one girl, or one of only a handful, in the room and when the sport requires a different level of physicality to any other.
“It definitely was pretty intimidating because I didn’t really know anyone,” said Mansfield junior Tessa Johnson. She laughed, “There were fully grown men and you’re just a tiny little freshman.”
Johnson’s brother Colton was a captain during her freshman season, but her parents were initially reluctant to let her take part. Watching Mansfield’s first female wrestler, Greta Hobbs (who went on to wrestle at Western New England) helped overcome that hesitation. Through her brother, Johnson knew many of the names of the wrestlers even if she was meeting them as teammates for the first time. In her first match, Johnson (who was at the time and is still the lone female wrestler on the team) wrestled a fellow freshman and won.
“After about a week, I just became really close with a lot of the kids and became friends with them and now it’s just so much easier,” Johnson explained. “Wrestling is my favorite sport. I’ve gotten some of my best friends from playing the sport.
Berry’s father, Ray, is an assistant coach at Boston Latin and coaches at Frontier Wrestling based at American Grit in Canton. She has been around the sport her whole life and started wrestling in eighth grade, although she admitted it wasn’t until the summer before her sophomore year that she “got the bug” and fell in love with the sport.
“The hardest part is getting started,” Berry said. “Just walking into a room being the only girl isn’t easy in any setting and then when it’s a martial arts setting it’s even harder. Having other girls present makes it so much easier for the other girls to pick it up.” Berry was the lone female wrestler on the team when she started as a sophomore, but she is one of four in the program this year.
Like Johnson, Berry found that after putting in the work in practice she quickly became part of the team. No one was worried about the boy-girl dynamic when they were going through another grueling workout.
“The first day I walked into the practice room sophomore year, it just felt like I was there with them,” she said. “I was their equal. I never really felt like I was less than them. We always had an understanding that we’re going through wrestling together. It’s a hard sport, so we’re all just going to get through it together.”
Stoughton senior Ava Vieira, who picked up the sport in January of last year, added, “The worst part was trying to find a wrestling partner. It was really awkward looking around and stuff, but it was honestly a very welcoming environment. By day two, I knew everybody’s names and we were best friends.”
Former Sharon wrestler Meghan Wiebe, who is currently a member of a club team at Lehigh University, had no wrestling experience when she started as a freshman (“I was really bad actually,” she joked) but she loved weightlifting and wanted a sport that focused on strength. She admitted that having Sarah Kinsman already on the team and having her friend Samantha Rabkin also trying out at the same time was probably the only reason she gave it a shot.
“It is very intimidating to join a sport with a bunch of men that you don’t know,” Wiebe explained.
“By the end, the boys on the team were my brothers. The thing that really helped me get over that was that I was very willing to learn and they were very willing to teach. They loved helping me and it was a lovely environment that I was lucky to be a part of.”
Smith laughed and said she got tricked into trying wrestling. She had been a manager for the football team and former OA coach Adam Pomella asked if she would be interested in doing something similar for wrestling. There were only a couple of female wrestlers and Smith thought she would give it a try and support her friends.
“The more that you put effort into something, the more you want to stick with it,” said Smith, who is committed to play field hockey at Merrimack next year. “I learned to love wrestling by mistake.”
When she first started, Smith said that it felt like “two teams” because girls events were typically separate. The coaches worked hard to support them and make everyone an important part of the team and, eventually, Smith felt more comfortable.
“As I got along with the people and started going to more practices and working hard,” she said, “I felt like everyone’s energy matched and it was less about being boy/girl and more about being wrestlers and trying to improve each other.”
Building a community across the league
Having gone through the experience of walking into a male-dominated sport and of getting on the mat in practice and varsity meets with the guys, there is a shared experience that connects the female wrestlers across the league and the state.
Smith said, “We’ve all had the first day when we were nervous to wrestle against boys or nervous to do the sport. It’s hard to get yourself into the sport as a girl and to see yourself having a place in that environment, so all the girls understand each other.”
Wiebe acknowledged there is a constant struggle between wanting to support fellow female wrestlers and help form a community that can grow the sport for more women to take part, but also being a competitor and wanting to win (both for yourself and your team).
“I think women’s wrestling is at this moment right now where the amount of people who are joining is amazing because it will give other women the opportunity to wrestle women and to have this camaraderie with women,” she said. “There was also the other side that you wouldn’t want to be the person who is only looking out for the women.”
Johnson remarked, “Any time that I see a girl on the mat or we’re at a dual meet and there’s a girl who is wrestling a kid from my team, I know I should be rooting for the kid on my team but it’s always great to see a girl win or give a good fight.”
“It’s really unique,” Berry said. “You can’t really talk to someone about it who hasn’t gone through it. I feel like getting off the mat and being able to talk to (fellow senior) Ava (Vieira) and just talk through things, it’s really awesome.”
More female wrestlers means less wrestling the guys
Wiebe, who wrestled at 165 in high school, didn’t compete in an all-girls tournament until she took part in states last year. It was mentally taxing. She knew that she was a strong wrestler but, in a very competitive weight class, Wiebe wasn’t seeing the results on the mat. She worried that she was letting the team down, despite her coaches’ reassurances.
Having the opportunity to compete against other female wrestlers gave her a different perspective on the sport.
“It made me fall in love with wrestling all over again because it was the sport at its purest form,” she said. “It didn’t feel like a mismatch to me.”
Wiebe added, “The men’s bodies are just bigger than yours and it’s hard to get better quickly. Especially now, I’m on a women’s team and I can feel myself getting better at wrestling so much faster because I have the opportunity to train skill stuff where I’m not going to be overpowered.”
The sport is growing at a rapid rate but teams still only have a few experienced female wrestlers on their teams. Programs like Frontier Wrestling have helped introduce the sport to younger age groups and adding female coaches to the staff (for example at OA) also provide positive representation on the bench.
More tournaments are providing girls brackets and, across the state, there are more all-girls tournaments being offered, although that presents its own challenge for coaches who might have wrestlers competing in multiple locations or multiple days in the same weekend.
Smith said that fear of wrestling guys is still a factor for some girls who are considering the sport. “The girls that I’ve asked to join the team or tried to get interested in wrestling have been like, ‘Oh, do you have to wrestle boys?’ I’m not going to lie to them, sometimes you have to.”
When asked if she prefers competing in the all-girls meets, Smith replied, “It makes the sport more fun. I’ll wrestle a boy but I prefer to wrestle girls and I prefer it feeling like my own space and my own sport.”
Vieira added, “Everything the boys get, we should have for the girls too. More stuff that the boys have but just girls-only would make the sport grow so much faster.”
Johnson also noted that having more competitions for the girls will increase the visibility for individual wrestlers. The boys are always looking at their rankings and know exactly who they need to beat in their weight class. Now, she hopes the girls can have that same level of excitement and coverage.
“I wrestled my first girls tournament that wasn’t all-states or something like that and it was really good because I got to see more girls and get more experience,” Johnson said. “It made it way more competitive and a lot more fun.
Johnson continued, “It made it feel like how the guys view wrestling. It was cool that I got to have those girls who you know and maybe you’ve wrestled them before.”
Winning is a lot of fun
The Hockomock League has a long history of success in wrestling. From state title-winning teams to individual champions at all levels, winning is part of the expectation for Hock wrestlers. It has been no different for the girls.
Last year, Sharon placed third as a team at the all-state meet and second at New Englands. Overall, the league had six wrestlers qualify for the New England tournament.
Wiebe was the all-state champion at 165 pounds and, with a 4-0 decision in the final, won the New England title as well. Rabkin, who is now wrestling at Western New England, was second at both all-states and New Englands. Smith took fourth at all-states and became the first OA wrestler (male or female) to place at New Englands, finishing fourth.
“It’s definitely awesome to have the opportunity to win,” said Berry, whose first tournament victory was at last year’s Div. 2 states and who has won her weight class three times this season. “In years past, I might have gone to one girls tournament the whole year, so it’s awesome to be able to get a bracket and a medal like the guys do.”
She is already looking forward to the postseason competition. “I looked on Flo(Wrestling) and kind of stalked some people,” Vieira said. “I’m going to have some really tough opponents and I can’t wait. There are New England finalists, a couple-times state champion, and it’s like yes, let’s go!”
“The worst part about matches is the anticipation before them,” Smith explained. “You know that feeling when you’re about to sneeze? And then when you finally sneeze it feels great. It’s like, thank goodness that’s over with it. I think that’s a big hook to the sport. You’re so relieved, so proud of yourself, when you win.”
“That’s what made me fall in love with the sport is getting past all the setbacks and actually just focusing on myself and focusing on my skills and winning.”
For the love of the sport
Wrestling is hard work. The effort that goes into every practice, the conditioning, the drills, all the preparation that goes into getting onto the mat for a match and being able to go toe-to-toe with your opponent is hard.
The struggle is part of the enjoyment.
Johnson said with a laugh, “If you didn’t have anything else to talk about then you can talk about how much practice just sucks. It just makes you feel equal. Everybody is there putting in the same amount of work.”
“I love that it takes your willpower and hard work,” Smith explained. “There are no shortcuts in wrestling. You have to rely on how you do in practice for how you’ll do in your matches.”
Berry said, “I like everything that you learn with it. That’s the best part. I like the values and the hard work and seeing it pay off when you start picking things up and start putting things together.”
Vieira said simply, “I love it. There aren’t a lot of sports like it. It’s aggressive.”
With the league adding a girls showcase to its championship meet, there is a new opportunity to highlight how far girls wrestling has come and capitalize on the momentum that is already building in the Hock to take the sport to the next level.
Everyone agrees that the showcase is just the start and, when the numbers support it, having a full girls tournament is the goal for the Hockomock League.
“A girls division would be huge,” Wiebe said. “I think it would make the growth of the sport happen a lot faster. The skill level that you’d see from women would go crazy. Women would get so much better so much faster.”
