By Packy Moore
10/3/2024
Sport to become school’s 11th women’s varsity team
This article first appeared on luthernorse.com.
Luther announced Sept. 19 the addition of women’s wrestling as the college’s 11th varsity sport for women for the upcoming 2025-26 academic year.
“Luther has a long legacy of supporting its students’ desire to belong to teams, to learn discipline and resiliency and to compete,” Luther President Jenifer K. Ward said. “We were among the first colleges to establish varsity teams for women, beginning in 1964 — well before Title IX legislation required us to. We will soon celebrate our 60th anniversary offering our women opportunities to participate in varsity athletics.”
Along with announcing the addition of the program, Ward established milestones for the upcoming months.
“This will be a planning year in 2024-25,” Ward said. “Our timeline is to use this fall and winter to get the word out to recruits that the program will begin next fall. We will begin a nationwide search for our first women’s wrestling coach this winter, so that we can hire as soon as possible after this wrestling season, and we will field our first team in the 2025-26 academic year.”
Athletic Director Renae Hartl and men’s wrestling coach Dave Mitchell joined Ward in her online announcement.
“With both the NCAA and the American Rivers Conference set to add women’s wrestling as a championship, the moment to join in is now,” Hartl said. “And with renovations underway at the future Gerdin Fieldhouse for Athletics and Wellness, including an expanded wrestling training space, the timing is perfect.”
“I have seen the growth of girls wrestling in the state of Iowa first-hand and I know many of the great coaches leading girls high school programs in Iowa and beyond,” Mitchell said. “We offered a girls’ wrestling team camp in 2023, and it grew significantly this year. One of the top questions I get asked by girls and coaches at camp, and by our alumni and Luther wrestling fans, is, ‘When is Luther adding women’s wrestling?'”
For Luther, the addition of women’s wrestling takes the college to 22 total varsity sports, with 11 for women and 11 for men. It comes two years after the college added both men’s and women’s bowling as varsity teams.
“We’re proud to add to Luther’s legacy of being a college that promotes new athletic opportunities for women,” Hartl said. “With Luther adding the sport, the state of Iowa will lead the nation with the most collegiate women’s wrestling programs to date. With the recent announcements by the A-R-C and NCAA, I know this can open up recruiting opportunities for students from other states to come to Decorah.”
Mitchell added the attraction will also be local.
“Our wrestling community is eager to have opportunities for our local and regional girls to study and compete, and the timing is perfect to provide those opportunities right here,” Mitchell said. “The coach who leads this new program is coming into a strong wrestling support system in a strong girls wrestling region. For example, we have in Decorah both the girls state team champions and the girls wrestling coach of the year, Gene Adams, who was an All-American himself here at Luther.”
The visibility and strength of Luther’s existing men’s program provides another support for the decision.
“Luther is known nationwide for excellence in wrestling, and in the future, we expect to see that excellence on both the men’s and women’s teams,” Hartl said.
“The construction for our Gerdin Fieldhouse is underway, and those plans include a wrestling facility expansion and a dedicated women’s wrestling locker room, so the time is right to move swiftly to align our programming with our facility renovation,” Ward said.
At the 2025 NCAA Convention in January, the three divisions will vote on the a proposal to create an National Collegiate women’s wrestling championship. If approved, women’s wrestling will become the 91st national championship offered by the NCAA.
Competition schedules cannot be determined until later this year, as both the A-R-C and NCAA are finalizing details of participation in their respective first years of competition. The total number of first-year participants may also be a factor.
“We won’t know for a while whether this will begin as open competition or also include team duals,” Hartl said. “What we do know is young women will have the opportunity to put on that famous Luther blue singlet and compete like a Norse.”
State and national organization leaders expressed their support for Luther’s addition of women’s wrestling.
“The addition of women’s wrestling at Luther College will no doubt have a generational impact for female athletes to come,” said Erin Gerlich, executive director of the Iowa Girls High School Athletics Union (IGHSAU). “As we look across our state and our country over recent years, girls wrestling is one of the fastest growing programs offered in sports. In Iowa alone, we have consistently seen the number of high school female wrestlers grow exponentially each year and reports from the youth wrestling community show no signs of girls wrestling slowing down anytime soon.”
“On behalf of our NWCA Board of Directors, I extend a heartfelt thanks to the Luther College administration for recognizing and embracing the rising popularity of girls and women’s wrestling in a state that has always been synonymous with the sport,” said Mike Moyer, executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association. “Anytime we add more opportunities for young women to further their educational and athletic goals in college, it’s a win for our students and a win for our sport.”
Girls wrestling has grown exponentially in high schools since the IGHSAU sanctioned it, expanding from from 58 schools to 204 schools with teams and another 61 with cooperative sharing agreements.
“Iowa has become a leader in the collegiate world for women’s wrestling, which allows our Iowa girls even more opportunity to pursue their wrestling dreams at the next level,” Gerlich added.
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The Emerging Sports for Women program – overseen by the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics – was established in 1994 based on a recommendation from the NCAA Gender Equity Task Force. Since then, five sports have become championship sports (beach volleyball, rowing, ice hockey, water polo and bowling), while women’s wrestling is on track to become the sixth, pending membership approval at the 2025 NCAA Convention. In 2022-23, emerging sports accounted for over 4,200 participation opportunities for student-athletes based on NCAA Sports Sponsorship and Participation Rates data.
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