ASTON — Much differs in the paths that Olivia Ronan and Jameson Strickland took to Sun Valley’s wrestling room.
Ronan, a junior, is the oldest of seven kids. Strickland, a freshman, has two older brothers who blazed the trail to Sun Valley sports. Where Strickland wrestled through middle school, with prodigious results, Ronan was well into high school before she gave a sport well ingrained in her family a try.
In that way, the teammates represent two very different constituencies that the expansion of girls wrestling in Pennsylvania sought to capture: lifers who would’ve trudged through the barriers to compete in a nominally boys sport, and the casual interest captured once those obstacles fell. The pair comprises the first installment of Sun Valley girls wrestling, in the season’s first year as a PIAA sport.
Sun Valley, with its recent history of wrestling success, was the 95th school in the state to adopt a girls team. The 100-school mark, hit last February, was the threshold for recognition by the PIAA, which will conduct girls championships this spring. Pennsylvania championships for female wrestlers had previously been overseen in a school-affiliated format akin to varsity hockey.
Strickland and Ronan watched the surge with interest, albeit from different vantage points. Strickland saw it as inevitable, reflecting the popularity she saw at tournaments.
“It just felt amazing, slowly watching,” she said. “When I was younger, I was always the only girl in my brackets and if I saw another girl at a tournament, I’d be so excited – like oh, it’s another girl, because it wasn’t common. And slowly seeing more and more girls and more and more girls divisions, it feels good because it’s seeing other people enjoy what I enjoy.”
Her arrival to wrestling was very Sun Valley: She is friends with Mia Ellis, daughter of Vanguard head coach Tom Ellis. Many of Strickland’s early encounters with the sport were while hanging out with Mia, and she was quickly hooked. Having two older brothers — Brecken wrestles, while Ryder once did and now focuses on football — provided plenty of basement sparring practice. (Jameson wrestles at 145 pounds, Brecken at 139.)
Ronan came to wrestling later. She comes from a wrestling family – her dad wrestled in school, as did her mom briefly, and two of her five brothers wrestle. But her place in the family’s wrestling heritage was a non-starter until girls competition began.
“I felt left out in a way, just because I do other sports but I wanted to try wrestling,” she said. “And for the longest time, my dad was like, no. But I convinced him this year and I started wrestling because I was friends with Jameson and I was like, I want to be here.”
For Strickland and Ronan — and untold others interested — feeling like interlopers in a boys sport limited participation. Wrestling against boys, with all the awkwardness of teenagerhood, was for many an implacable impediment. Allowing girls to have their own realm has fixed that.
The sport is sponsored by 6,545 schools nationally, per data from the National Federation of High School Associations. Pennsylvania is one of 40 states that sanction competitions. NFHS reported 50,016 female wrestlers in its 2022-23 nationwide survey, a 58 percent increase from 2021-22 and more than double the 21,124 from 2018-19. Wrestling participation among boys has risen steadily, up 11.9 percent year on year. But girls drove the rise to more than 300,000 wrestlers in the U.S. for the first time since 1978.
“That’s the main reason that there’s a lot more girls wrestling now, because they’ll know they get to wrestle girls,” Strickland said. “Before, no one wanted to wrestle boys. I grew up wrestling boys and I would tell people, oh you should try this, and none of them would because obviously, you don’t want to get beat up by a boy. And a lot of girls that just started didn’t have to deal with that.”
Ronan has struggled through injuries in her first varsity season, with a 1-6 record.
Strickland, however, is off to a flying start. She’s 20-1 with 16 pins and hasn’t lost to an opponent from Pennsylvania. Her only loss came to Julia Fongaro of Boonton (N.J.) at the Beast of the East, where she finished fifth at 145 pounds. She’s won the 148-pound crown at four tournaments: the Bishop McCort Girls Open, the Ralph Wetzel Classic, the Souderton Big Red Girls Tournament and last weekend’s Lebanon Girls Tournament.
The vibe at a girls tournament, she said, is so much different than when a handful of girls attend a boys meet.
“It is the best environment ever,” said Strickland, who counts friends from throughout the region’s wrestling community and across class years. “It’s my favorite. You can just walk around and being surrounded by people who do the same thing you do, you make friends instantly. … It’s just a really good bond that’s just automatically there.”
For both, wrestling has drawn them closer to family. Jameson and Brecken often analyze each other’s matches together, especially if they’re at different tournaments. Ronan has gotten her younger sister interested in the sport, and two brothers, who wrestle at Aston A.A. and Northley Middle School, could follow her path to varsity. Her brother is wrestling up at a tournament this week to Ronan’s weight, so she’s volunteered as a stand in to prep.
The more they wrestle, the easier it’ll be for the next group of girls to follow.
“I think girls coming up to watch girls tournaments is really inspiring because that can get them into wrestling,” Ronan said. “If they see a girls team wrestling a tournament, you’re going to think, ‘oh wait that looks pretty fun; that might be something I want to try.’”
