Sports

A Guide to Girls Wrestling

And What it Takes to Reach the Top

Oliver Abeyta • March 28, 2026

Boulder High’s own incredibly talented and accomplished female wrestler, Abby Borden, ’27, winds up to take on the team’s rival, Poudre High.

Have you ever heard of the girls’ wrestling team? For a large percentage of Boulder High, I can guarantee the answer is no, which is not surprising since there is virtually no mention of it on school websites. The main reason for this is that the team is run through Broomfield High School. Why does girls’ wrestling matter, you ask? Well, because one of the students here has recently competed for the state championship. I know what you’re thinking: there is a state championship for a sport no one has ever heard of? The answer is yes, and this sport is definitely something people have heard of.

In fact, girls’ wrestling is one of the nation’s fastest-rising sports, according to the USA Wrestling Girls High School Development Committee, and the number of female wrestlers in the US has increased from 112 in 1990 to over 79,000 in 2025. There has been a massive increase in participation in only a few short years. There are world-class competitions, even Olympic championships, with 3 different teams, all of which are taking gold medals in 2024.

Borden is Boulder High’s representative for the 2026 Girls Wrestling State Championship.

Now let’s talk about Abby Borden, ‘27. She is one of three students on the Broomfield team and has recently qualified for the 2026 State Championships. In an interview, Borden described the competition and explained how the state championship works. There are several types of competitions. The two main ones are trimeets and tournaments.

Borden described the tri-meet duals as events “like basketball.” Teams consist of three or more wrestlers, each competing in their individual weight class. Wrestlers face opponents from the same weight class on the opposite team. The team that scores the most points across all matches wins. In tri-meets, each team competes twice. Tournaments are the standard competition. These tournaments involve a bracket system, with multiple matches happening during the same day, and a scoring system to determine who is the overall winner. However, there are variants on these rules depending on the tournaments.

Borden later explained the logistics of reaching states. Each school is classified under a division, either 4A or 5A, depending on the population of the school and its team. For example, Broomfield is a big school with a substantial team, so it is in the 5A division.

To qualify for the state, a competitor must place in the top 4 in the regional tournaments of each division. However, in order to do that, each individual must figure out which weight group they should join, who they should wrestle, and a hundred other factors that can determine the outcome.

So if you are interested in this sport, you can sign up for the Broomfield High wrestling team. Or you can try to spread the word in Boulder High. According to Borden, the main reason why we do not have a team is simply that there are not enough girls signing up. So if you’re interested in a girls’ wrestling team, then spread the word and get more people interested in the sport. There is a reason why this sport is literally one of the fastest-growing sports in high school and in college.

About the Contributor

Oliver Abeyta, Writer

Known by his friends, family, dogs, marsupials, and assorted pieces of fruit as a funny, outgoing, optimistic, and creative person, Oli experiences sudden and unexplained urges to climb mountains. Because of this, Oli Abeyta is sometimes called a mountain goat as a joke by his closest friends. Born, bred, and currently living in the Denver metropolitan area, this young upstart is expected to show a different perspective on the societal views, features, and beliefs in Boulder. This spitfire has experienced many wonders in his short life and has traveled from the Isles of Japan to the northern grape-rich coast of the Mediterranean and back to the lush green jungles of South America. His travel has given this 14-year-old an extensive well of experience, knowledge, and culture, making him a promising addition to The Owl newspaper team (although often enough he is oblivious to major events happening in our society due to his intense hatred for social media, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC, and other celebrated networks). When Oli was asked to explain his reasoning, he responded with one of his favorite quotes: “The over-saturation of the media is a plague on one’s mind, so are normal amounts of saturation, or any saturation at all.” When he isn’t ranting about the media, he is often found deep in the woods following his dream of being an ecologist by studying the flora and fauna where the Rocky Mountains meet the Great Plains.