Lara Gonzalez (top) attempts to pin an opposing wrestler. Gonzalez, a senior at Millbrook High School in Raleigh, has been on the wrestling team for three years, including two years prior to the girls’ team being officially sanctioned. (Picture courtesy of Scott Saby.)

Benjamin McCormick via UNC Media Hub

People who hear that Millbrook High School freshman Lisa-Jean Foley wrestles, say they didn’t know a girl her size could do something like that — do something that the boys do. For senior Lara Gonzalez, people are shocked because she is typically interested in “girly things,” she said. To many, wrestling just isn’t considered a girly thing.

Sophomore Ella Friedman never thought she would wrestle. Up until last year, she was a soccer player, and she didn’t even know wrestling was an option. This year, she and Gonzalez were state qualifiers in North Carolina’s first official girls’ wrestling state championships, meaning they were one of the top 16 in the state in their weight classes. But not that long ago, she thought wrestling was a weird sport. 

That’s not an uncommon sentiment. Many people have never even heard of the sport. Girls’ wrestling? Do they have to wrestle the boys? That’s the question head coach Scott Saby often faces from those unfamiliar with the program. They don’t know that high school girls’ wrestling was officially sanctioned as its own separate entity in the state of North Carolina for the 2023-2024 year. They don’t know that Millbrook’s girls’ wrestling team has grown at a rapid pace. They don’t know that Millbrook’s girls’ wrestling are conference champions.

They don’t know that girls’ wrestling is here. “There’s no waiting anymore,” Saby said.

This isn’t the beginning of girls’ wrestling though. It’s been here, it just hasn’t been officially sanctioned as a competitive team sport. North Carolina was one of many states to officially sanction the sport over the last few years. Now, 44 of 50 states have officially recognized the sport. It’s quickly becoming the fastest-growing high school sport in the country.

“It being sanctioned is a big deal,” assistant coach and former Appalachian State wrestler Christian Beach said. “It’s a legit thing for girls to sign up for. They have their own separate thing, their own separate mat at the state tournament. It’s a much more ironed out process, and it’s helpful for the whole program and the girls.”

At Millbrook, located in Raleigh, North Carolina, girls have been wrestling for years. Former Wildcat Amy Williams placed first in the women’s invitational in 2021, and last year, Tori Bland finished fourth in the event. But interest has boomed since then.

Senior Gabriel Del Rosario, who has been wrestling on the boys’ team for three years, said that there have been girls on the team since the day he started. At that time, there were just a handful of girls on the team though. 

One of those girls was Gonzalez. She was in Saby’s health class as an underclassman. She said Saby was constantly talking up the team during class, which is something that was pretty common for him to do, according to senior Ebony Mejia-Aguilar. Even when health class was on Google Meet her freshman year in 2020-21, Saby was hyping the team up to all the kids in the class — boys and girls. COVID-19 wasn’t going to stall Saby’s sales pitch. His efforts weren’t in vain, either: Both Gonzalez and Mejia-Aguilar have been wrestling for three years now.

“He’s very persuasive,” Mejia-Aguilar said.

Saby even convinced her to stay on the team for her senior year when she had seriously considered quitting. 

“[Wrestling is] something that just stays with you,” Saby said. “So, why wouldn’t I want to encourage people to come out and do something that I know will benefit them? It’s our job when they come in the door to present it.”

A native of Rochester, Minnesota, Saby just finished up his 27th year coaching at Millbrook. The 54 year-old coach joked that he threatens retirement any chance he gets. But the truth is, he loves doing this. He said the growth of girls’ wrestling has been really exciting — it’s the kind of thing that keeps his coaching spark alive. 

Saby has had tremendous success both individually and with his teams throughout the years. He has coached state champions at Millbrook, which has helped him become known nationally throughout the wrestling world. He coaches with the Capital City Wrestling Club in Raleigh as well, and is currently serving as the North Carolina state chairman for the National Wrestling Coaches Association.

Before graduating from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse in 1992, Saby was a four-year varsity letterman wrestler in high school. Back then wrestling looked a lot different. Saby said he never wrestled with any girls during his high school years. 

“It just wasn’t a thing,” he said. “I’m sure there were females that wrestled, but it wasn’t really anything you thought of. It wasn’t offered.”

Recently, Saby has spent a lot of his time at Millbrook making sure that changes. He said that he knew girls wrestling was on the rise, it was just a matter of when the numbers would finally support the sport being officially sanctioned. He chalks a lot of the program’s success up to fortune, but he has been a constant pillar of encouragement for these girls, many of whom never dreamed in a million years that they would be wrestlers.

It was never an option until Saby or one of the other girls on the team reached out and presented the opportunity. Saby even told the girls he had on the team last year not to come back unless they brought a friend.

“I hope they know I was somewhat kidding,” he said. “But a lot of them brought a friend.” He plans to use that same strategy to grow the current 16-girl roster to 30 or more next year. 

“He’s always trying to pull someone into it,” Mejia-Aguilar said. “And for the success, for the longevity of it, he’s always looked for any way to get us into matches, into new opportunities for both teams, but especially the women’s team to really grow it.”

Due to the size of the girls team, Millbrook is uniquely situated. The team has been steadily growing over the years, but the official sanctioning of the sport helped membership grow exponentially. That wasn’t the case everywhere.

When you look at some of the other girls’ programs, all of which are still in their infancy, Millbrook’s squad is a true force. The other schools sometimes roll into tournaments with four or less girls. That’s not the case for Millbrook.

“We’re like a pack running around,” Saby said. “Because people see our numbers, and that’s a positive sign that we generated interest.”

At the moment, it’s clear that Millbrook is an outlier in high school girls’ wrestling. It’s tough for some of the other programs. Those girls are sometimes stretched thin, and they don’t have the same opportunities as the boys because they don’t have the interest yet.

Senior Taylor St. Clair said she probably wouldn’t have wrestled if she weren’t at Millbrook. She noticed the teams with only one or two girls, and admitted that it has to be difficult. At Millbrook, Assistant Principal Duane Flowers traveled up to three hours to see the girls and boys compete, even last year before the girls team was official. Saby said that the level of support from administration at Millbrook is unparalleled.

While Millbrook’s programs benefit from that support, it’s sometimes difficult to compete in a sport where some schools have such small teams. Del Rosario said that most schools’ girls’ teams don’t have full lineups like Millbrook, so the Wildcats have had to do their best to find matches, even if that means driving a bit further to find opponents so the girls have the same opportunities as the boys.  

“I feel like on a lot of other teams, people are scared to join,” sophomore Carson Crofut said. “They’re scared they’re not gonna be with people they know.”

That fear doesn’t seem to exist at Millbrook. For freshman Avery Herrera, this year was her first time playing a sport, and she fell in love with it. Her brother wrestled for four years, and her parents had shown her videos of former Wildcat champion Amy Williams wrestling. They had shown her examples of what she could be.

Herrera doesn’t think she would have wrestled if there wasn’t an official team this year, but now that she has joined, she looks right at home. As Saby stood in the wrestling room at Millbrook speaking about his program’s success, Herrera, Foley and another underclassman, Mary Jean Deen, laid on the ground hanging on to each word their coach said. 

They laughed and ran around the room, cutting up and having fun. While Crofut tried to speak, the other girls on the team were recording her and laughing, making it difficult for her to get out a sentence without chuckling through her words. 

“Leave her alone,” Saby said with a grin. “You can see how much fun we have,” he added. 

There’s a real community amongst the wrestlers. Not just among the girls either. Even though they are separate teams this year, Saby has a hard time separating the boys and the girls. The players go to team banquets, they go out to eat, they hang out at school and at practice. According to Del Rosario, they aren’t just teammates, they are friends. 

“Definitely more of a community aspect,” he said. “Because obviously you have the guys on the team, but it feels more like a family here. You have more people and you work together. There’s other goals that you can aspire to have as a team and it just makes winning as a team a lot more significant because it’s not just the boys, the girls, it’s more inclusive.”

Both teams have had their share of success too. The girls were Northern Athletic Conference (NAC VI) champions with a 15-1 overall record and 5-0 in conference play. Likewise, the boys were conference champions with a 23-3 overall record and 5-0 in conference. Senior Mohammed Jatta was a regional champion and placed fifth in his weight class at states. Jatta, Del Rosario and senior Kyle Amose were each conference champions in their respective classes as well.

“With the girls’ success, it’s motivated us to do as well as we could,” Jatta said. “And we ended up being better than last year.”

They are separate teams, and often they have separate practices, but in many ways they still operate as one big team, Saby said. He didn’t want them to feel like separate entities even though they competed separately this year. The girls and boys were constantly pulling for one another. “That made it a really great atmosphere for our team,” Saby said.

Del Rosario thinks that’s what makes Millbrook the most unique. They don’t just focus on boys wrestling — they focus on wrestling, period. 

“It definitely feels more welcoming,” he said. “I feel like we are probably one of the first schools to start implementing it at this scale.”

A lot of the program’s growth is thanks to administration, and a lot of it is thanks to Saby, but much of the increased interest is thanks to the upperclassmen on the team. St. Clair said that she and some of the other girls on the team didn’t know about wrestling until later in their career. But thanks to Saby’s recruiting efforts coupled with the veteran players on the team advocating for the sport, they got involved. Now, St. Clair said a lot of the school knows about girls’ wrestling.

The team has more than doubled in the last year, and a lot of that is because opportunities have expanded. As more girls get involved, it’s easier to grow the program exponentially because they see that it is possible.

“If I didn’t see any other girls wrestling, I wouldn’t have,” Friedman said. “I didn’t want to be the only one. You can look up to them and you can see that they’re good, and you know that you want to be good. If there weren’t any girls, I wouldn’t really have [anyone] to look up to.”

Lisa-Jean Foley said the older girls like Gonzalez, Crofut, St. Clair, Mejia-Aguilar and Friedman have all encouraged younger girls to get involved with wrestling. This was Lisa-Jean’s first year ever wrestling despite the fact that her dad, Ian, has a background with the sport. 

When his daughter decided she’d rather try wrestling than play basketball, Ian sent an email to Saby offering to help with the team.He hadn’t explained his background very well, so Saby thought he was just another parent. But once it became clear that Ian was qualified, he joined the staff. Now, Ian is balancing the act of the father-coach dual role, something that Saby did with his own sons at Millbrook. 

“[Saby’s] not one of those old patriarchal stereotype guys who don’t think girls should wrestle,” Ian said. “He’s been the tip of the spear. He’s had girls on the team for several years now.”

Ian wants to see his daughter compete and succeed in the sport he loves. But just as much as he wants Lisa-Jean to succeed, he wants the same for all of the other girls too. He and Saby both want other schools to grow their programs. On paper that seems a bit counterintuitive to root for the growth of competing programs, but Ian said it isn’t contradictory at all. They want to compete.

The sport of wrestling has been battling stereotypes about women for years. Whether it’s that they aren’t aggressive, or it isn’t girly, or it’s weird. 

It bothers senior St. Clair when people say women can’t wrestle as well as boys. She doesn’t like the myth that girls just aren’t as aggressive. “I’ve wrestled some pretty aggressive girls,” she said.

Lisa-Jean said she wishes that people were more accepting and encouraging of girls in wrestling. She doesn’t like it when they ask whether she wrestles other girls, or when they ask if she’s on a losing streak. 

Many people don’t think Lisa-Jean and other girls can be good wrestlers, and some don’t want girls to wrestle at all. So how do you change that?

“You just wrestle,” Ian said.

Providing the opportunity is one of the first steps — one of the biggest steps. Initially people saw girls in wrestling as girls just tagging along with the boys, but now it has some legs, Saby said. 

For Mejia-Aguilar, this opportunity means a lot. “When I first started here, there was practically nothing for the women’s team other than the other girls that wanted to do it with you,” she said. “Having such a big team really opened the gateway to being able to compete and win.”

St. Clair said she hopes to leave the younger girls with a positive image so they will keep coming back. And while she is not wrestling in college next year, St. Clair hopes to be involved in changing the girls’ wrestling landscape by working to expand opportunities for women in college wrestling. Currently, very few opportunities exist for women wrestlers in college.. Although, Saby is confident the sport’s growth will soon change that. 

For many of the girls at Millbrook, wrestling was never on their radar. Gonzalez said she never would have pictured herself doing this when she was younger, but now she is a state qualifier and a member of a highly successful program. She is part of a community of young wrestlers who have the support of their school, their coaches and each other. 

She is a part of the growth of girls’ wrestling. 

“If you don’t have the opportunity to do something,” she said. “You might never know whether you want to.”