Sigonella’s Rickalia Goss tries to escape from Naples’ Joaquin Villescas in a 120-pound match at the DODEA European Wrestling Championships in Wiesbaden, Germany on Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. (Kent Harris/Stars and Stripes)

Coming Thursday: basketball previews.

Rickalia Goss’ father shut down any talk of her wrestling heading into her senior season.

He had good reason. He didn’t want anything to jeopardize the Sigonella athlete’s track season.

Goss experienced injuries every year while wrestling against the boys. She twisted her ankle her freshman year, fractured her nose after getting hit in the face her sophomore campaign and hurt her hamstring and her kneecap shifted her junior season.

This year is different, though. Goss won’t wrestle boys anymore with the addition of a girls-wrestling division in DODEA-Europe. So, she got a fellow wrestler in Europe to send proof and asked Sigonella athletic director Michelle Chandler to convince him.

“I was really excited, but then I was kind of sad at the same time because I thought I wasn’t going to do it,” said Goss, who started a week after practices began because of her father’s hesitation. “But then he talked to Ms. Chandler and confirmed that there was all-girls wrestling.”

Goss is just one of many girls joining the ranks of the girls-wrestling division in its inaugural season.

And the excitement stretches across the DODEA European scene. At Ramstein, the largest school in DODEA-Europe and the two-time defending team champion, 60 girls showed up for interest meetings, as well as individual sales pitches by veterans and European qualifiers from previous campaigns in Genesis Esparza and Liberty Snyder.

The addition of girls wrestling mirrors the trend back home. Forty-five states have sanctioned the sport as of this year, with 39 coming since 2018.

According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), 64,257 participants wrestled on girls teams during 2023-2024 – double the number of 31,654 who competed in 2021-2022.

That growth has carried over to higher levels, too. Earlier this year, the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics approved recommending all divisions add a national women’s wrestling championship during the 2025 NCAA Convention in Nashville, Tenn., on Jan. 15-18.

If passed, it would become the 91st NCAA championship sport, with a projected first championship in winter 2026.

According to the NCAA’s Sports Sponsorship and Participation Rates Report, a total of 76 programs and 1,226 wrestlers competed in women’s wrestling during the 2023-2024 season.

“Being one of the only girls that were on the mat wrestling and being the first girl on the teams for club teams, it’s very exciting to see that they’re giving us the opportunities that we wanted in the beginning, but we couldn’t get yet,” said Ramstein’s Lily Greene, who competed at the European tournament as a member of Kaiserslautern’s squad last season at 106 pounds.

Rumblings about sanctioning girls wrestling had been going for a while, according to Alconbury’s Richele Reyes.

A three-time European qualifier while at AFNORTH, the senior heard from the father of Sophia Yorko, a Lakenheath graduate who’s now competing at NAIA-school Baker University, that parents, coaches and administrators were pushing for a girls division.

“I initially thought, ‘All right, this probably won’t happen until I’m long gone. This probably won’t be something much done for maybe another two to three years,’” Reyes said. “So, when I found out there was going to be a girls division (this year), I thought, ‘Wow, that was a lot faster than I thought.’”

And then the recruitment began.

Multiple girls mention that before, it had been tough to convince others to give wrestling a chance because it was against boys. Not only were injuries common and there were usually differences in strength issues, but no girl had won a European title. Stuttgart’s McKinley Fielding in 2020 and Ramstein graduate September Snyder in 2023 got close, taking runners-up honors.

Reyes said her exploits already have helped bring in one athlete – her sister, Maya. So, she knows how having an example can inspire others to come out for the sport.

Kaiserslautern’s Uno Tate is just one of two Raider girls this campaign. Before moving to Europe, the senior competed in Alaska, which was one of the first states to sanction girls wrestling for the 2014-2015 season. She said the girls wrestling community there already was established when she joined, and it may take some time to build it in Europe.

“Some girls are scared or they’ve been so used to boys and girls wrestling (each other) here that they were like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to wrestle because I’d have to wrestle boys,’” Tate said. “Now, you don’t have to wrestle the boys. It’s a girls-sanctioned sport, so I’m really hoping that more girls come out.”

For this first season, the girls division will be split into eight weight classes – 105, 110, 115, 120, 130, 140, 155 and more than 170 pounds. European athletic director Kathy Clemmons said the weight classes could be adjusted during the season.

The wrestlers understand this is an experiment. Their legacy will be based on whether they can inspire more girls to hit the mats to carry on long after they’re gone.

“I hope that we’re going to leave a good impact,” Esparza said. “(Either) this is the first wrestling team and it didn’t work out, but at least we were the first to try it. Or it was the first wrestling team and it succeeded and it led to many opportunities for other females.”