I didn’t realize this happened. But a search shows that since there may be fewer girls interested in wrestling they often have to have matches with the boys. I spotted this because of this photo which shows one of the situations that can occur:
I’ve wrested girls from Ohio while in high school, although none above my weight class. They are tough and pinned me quite a few times. I salute them!
I used to do BJJ with several women years back. No big deal. Of course, we were all older than HS. And none of the women were in my weight class (heavy).
I would think that men would have a strength advantage over women in the same weight class.
Grappling is pretty much disgusting, whether against your same or other sex. Easy to put that out of your mind. And you’d better, if your opponent has any skills.
I’m not seeing the problem. Wrestling is wrestling.
You are right. I had the arms going to the wrong person. My bad.
Ha, I see what you were meaning. Even then, wrestling is still wrestling. Parts are going to get grabbed. I’m not sure what the problem is if the participants agree to wrestle it seems fair even if typically the female breast area is sexualized. I think the benefits of engaging in sport outweigh puritanical worries. But that’s just my opinion.
I believe that Oklahoma (a wrestling hotbed) is finally at the point where there are enough girls competing state wide for gender separated brackets by weight class in the state tournament, though any given tournament or dual may not have girls competing.
Girls are very competitive at wrestling with guys in lower weight classes. They might be at a disadvantage in terms of the ability to add muscle strength, but wrestling is about a lot more than over-powering an opponent, although being strong helps.
I wrestled in Jr High. I didn’t have to match up with any girls, but it was something that happened in rare occasions back then. Less common than today, but it was a thing that occasionally made waves at some tournaments.
I confess, I probably would have had a big issue had I been matched up against them. Its a lose-lose preposition for any guy. You win, you basically got to bully a girl, you lose…you lost to a girl. And I see no way that I could psyche myself up to go as hard and as violent as you need to be to win a tough match against a girl. Too much ingrained training to never get physical with a female to overcome, and if the girl is legitimately strong enough and skilled enough to beat you, going at 75% would pretty much ensure a loss
I want to be progressive and I want to give everyone an opportunity, but this not a straightforward thing. There’s an inherent unfairness here, contact sports are violent and there’s no way around that. You either have to find the head space to be violent against a girl, and do all the unrestricted grabbing and pushing that is needed, or you hold back, which isn’t sporting.
High school boys and girls have been wrestling with each other for a very long time.
Seems like an appropriate thread for this:
Girls wrestling is gaining strength (pun intended) in the Midwest. When my son was a youth wrestler, he had to wrestle a couple of girls. He was a little freaked out the first time, and I told him “That’s not a girl, that’s a wrestler. If you have to put your hand between her legs, you do it.”
I wrestled throughout high school and college. And I’m SO glad I didn’t wrestle any girls. It was embarrassing enough to lose every single match to another guy…
I had a similar wrestling career but gave up sooner.
One of my sons wrestled a girl when he was in Jr High. He seemed a little embarrassed but didn’t object.
There is significant body smooshing when grappling so it’d probably be more comfortable for both genders if they had a separate girls league. I imagine in most areas there aren’t enough lady wrestlers to make it happen.
I wrestled for one year in high school. I was quite tall and thin for my weight class and it seemed all the others were small, compact wrestlers that ran around between my legs and toppled me easily.
We don’t have many wrestling threads so maybe I can tell a wrestling joke without getting lambasted.
A trainer had put his wrestler against the champ, who was known for his deadly “octopus hold” that no one had ever escaped from. The two were going at it hammer and tongs when all of a sudden - damn - his guy is trapped in the octopus hold. The trainer turns around and walks off dejectedly when all of a sudden a huge cry is heard from the crowd. He turns around and his guy has his arm held up by the referee - he won!
In the locker room he asked the wrestler, “How did you ever get out of the octopus hold”? He replied, “Well, I thought I had him but it was just a ruse, he dropped out of my Nelson, swung around and put me in that damn hold. I was all twisted up and right in front of my eyes was a pair of balls. So I bit them. It’s surprising what you can do when you are biting your own balls”.
I would have had a hard time wrestling a girl in high school. This might sound weird coming from a heterosexual male, but I was perfectly comfortable grappling other sweaty young men in front of an audience whereas I would have been uncomfortable grappling a sweaty young woman in front of an audience. I mean where the hell is it safe to grab her? And it was ingrained into my little pea brain that you don’t engage in violent activities against girls. I played football, boxed, wrestled, and did some judo and I never had any girls or women as opponents.
But I probably would have adapted and gotten over any lingering doubts in short order once I got used to the idea of a girl wrestler just being another opponent. I’m glad these girls are able to participate in the sport. Overall, I found wrestling to be one of the safest of the “violent” sports to engage in.
It was called the Cobra Clutch in the version I heard. 
40 years ago, when I was in high school, a girl who was a perpetual attention-seeker went out for the wrestling team, and not only were the boys not willing to be on a team with her, their parents descended on the school and said, “My son is not wrestling with a girl!” She was made the team manager, IIRC.
Based on how I remember her, I suspect she had some degree of autism, and this is how she presented herself. She wasn’t at our HS during my senior/her junior year, and nobody seemed to know what had happened to her. I found out when I saw her at Target (where I worked) one day, obviously pregnant. Since nobody ever saw her with a baby, I’m guessing she placed it for adoption when it was born, and in the meantime was either homeschooled, or more likely went to the “maternity school”.
I recently found out that she died several years ago. RIP, K. You did deserve happiness, no matter what a lot of other people said.