The Prescott Cardinals’ wrestling season is underway with practices beginning two weeks ago, but this year there are going to be some new faces on the mats.

As part of the 2021-22 wrestling season the WIAA sanctioned girls wrestling. This afforded girl wrestlers who previously could only compete within the boys’ leagues an opportunity to wrestle in a girls only season and still participate in team duals or events where they may wrestle boys.

Being that this is still only a couple years removed from that decision, the boys’ and girls’ seasons are still fairly intertwined. Both seasons started Nov. 13, and both boys and girls end their season in the Kohl Center at the Individual State Tournament. 

Currently Ian Ruble is the head coach of both teams. Given that it's their first year sanctioning the sport, the thought is that they will learn a lot about what additional staff they need and what the program needs are in general throughout this inaugural season.

“It's something that fans of Prescott wrestling should be excited about. The addition of a girls team came mainly from one of our athletes who wanted to wrestle in high school and participate in the girls’ season,” Ruble said. “The whole athletic program worked together to navigate the WIAA side of things and get immediate needs taken care of. Being that it's our first year, I'm happy with the turnout of students wanting to join. Right now, we have three girl wrestlers. Being that we have had lower boys’ numbers over the past few years, getting three girls is proportionally great.”

One of the first wrestlers to join was three-sport athlete sophomore Charlotte Kellogg.

“My brother and my friend Addy who are both wrestlers talked me into it. It’s been a little stressful, but it gets better every day. People get more used to you, and it's just a really good community,” Kellogg said. “Day one was a lot of conditioning. We learned basics like stances, level changes and sprawling. It was a good transition, not too stressful, but it was hard to understand what they were saying a lot of times at first because everybody learns differently. Just asking more questions made it so much easier for me.”

Brooklyn Macheska was the last of the three Prescott wrestlers to join the team. A dedicated athlete, Tuesday was her first day of practice.

“I used to play volleyball when I broke my ankle last year for the second time, so I'm out for now. She needed a partner, and I can't not play a sport,” Macheska said. “I’m excited to try something new and to learn something.”

A new program has to begin somewhere, and Ruble is excited about its future.

“Recruitment has been slow right now because we're just beginning. We're going to start small, but we'll get bigger. The goal is to have our three girls get experienced this year and then maybe each bring a friend so we’ll go from three to six,” Ruble said. “I started out by emailing all the female fall sports coaches to let everyone know it's an option because everybody's aware of basketball, but no one's aware of wrestling.”

Another team in the area that is working on developing their girls’ wrestling program is River Falls. This season they only have two wrestlers, and one of them placed highly in the state tournament last year. The idea has been floated to combine the teams like the girls’ hockey team does in River Falls with the St. Croix Fusion, but Ruble says it really isn’t necessary.

“The co-op was an idea. It was just kind of too late in the year, and there is a lot of politics involved with cooperating as far as who gets what, paying for shuttles back and forth and all those kind of logistical things that just make it really hard,” Ruble said. “For a true dual, yes you need five, but a lot of teams in Wisconsin only have a couple girls. They’ll either get mixed in if they fit into the actual dual, otherwise they'll do like exhibition matches before or after the dual. Also, a lot of tournaments in the area just have a girls bracket, combining all the girls to give them a chance to wrestle that way.”

Understandably there’s a learning curve, but it’s the same for the girls as it is for the younger boys and those who are just getting back into it.

“Our kids are athletic, it's been smoother for them than it might be for some. They're patient about taking their time, but it is what it is at this point. If they go up and give up a billion points, well we're learning, so it's okay,” Ruble said. “Learning by doing is how wrestling works. I can show you a move 1,000 times, but until you have someone giving you an actual fight and the resistance that you only get in a match, you just can't get there till you get there.”

So far, the Cardinals haven’t picked a date for when the girls will get their first wrestling action, but Ruble says they aren’t going to hold them back. The wrestling season kicks off at 9 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 2 in Ellsworth, but it remains to be seen if the girls will be ready.

“The first opportunity you can get on the mat and wrestle is when they’ll wrestle whether that's the Eau Claire North girls only tournament the second weekend of December or the Ellsworth Invite on Dec. 2 which has said that while there isn't a true separate tournament, but if they can put it together for us they’re going to do that,” Ruble said. “It's definitely a big push across the state. It's just that there's so many like small, isolated pockets right now. Once we get farther down the line here there’ll be big jumps as far as organizing things.”

Whether the girls get on the mats right away or not, it’s an exciting time for this Prescott wrestling program, and Ruble says he has high hopes for the future.

“Maybe it's, you know, two, three years down the road at this point, but I'd love to have a full girls’ team. A lot of teams in the southern half of the state have that luxury, and I’d be looking at that as an end goal for this,” Ruble said.