Over a year ago, John Carroll University’s Women’s Wrestling debuted as a varsity sports team. The first home match brought in a record-breaking crowd of students, faculty, alumni and community members, marking a historic moment for JCU athletics.

With such an electric start, one has to wonder: how is the team doing one year later? Mark Hawald, head coach of the Women’s and Men’s Wrestling teams, provided an update. 

Thinking back to last season, the team had some struggles being a new, freshman-only team and not having enough wrestlers for each weight class, but overall it was  a great year with three athletes going to nationals. To start their second season, Hawald highlighted the main goals of the team this year: continued growth and improvement. 

 “We want to be great and amazing immediately, but you can’t ever be great unless you have some vision and goals in mind, even if they’re unrealistic. You also have to have patience and acceptance of what the limitations might be,” shared Hawald. “We have to always be happy, but we can never be satisfied.”

The team had some trouble with recruiting for this year but was able to bring in five new wrestlers, bringing the team roster to 11 girls. An ideal team size is 20-25 wrestlers, so recruiting, especially out of state, is another goal for the team.

When asked about some troubles of recruiting, Hawald shared that “girls wrestling in high school is considered the fastest growing sport in the country, but it’s not as popular locally as it is in other parts of the state like Cincinnati and Columbus.” 

Another challenge that this new team has had to face is the lack of tradition. As Hawald stated, “The biggest challenge was, when compared to the men’s team, we have 60 years of tradition. The freshman would come in and learn from the seniors, who when they were freshman, learned from the seniors, and so on…that did not exist [for the girls].” 

Despite knowing that challenges were bound to occur, Hawald emphasized why he wanted this team. “The rewards in athletics are easy to see with championships and trophies—that’s the goal and what we all want. But truthfully, everybody who participates gains more than that,” he added, “The words I use are: relationships, memories, emotions and experiences. Those are things that everybody gets, and they’re not all great, but that’s what you get out of a sport.” 

“With the booming of women’s wrestling throughout the country, I felt that this university and this wrestling program had offered so much to men, and it would be a shame if we were limited to 50% of the population.” 

Thinking of big goals for the team, Hawald hopes to have girls that go to the national tournament and become all-Americans. For some more day-to-day goals, he hopes that the team continues to grow and improve and continue to build a culture. 

To close, Hawald highlighted the teams’ resilience. “To have these challenges and setbacks and to never quit and stay persistent was very impressive”

He also shared his gratitude for the university and community who have been supportive and gave a special thanks to the team Chaplin, Melanie Moss.