It’s been more than one year since girls' wrestling became an official high school sport in Pennsylvania. WPSU’s new documentary, “The Chance to Wrestle,” follows that effort and explores the long history of girls' wrestling in the state and across the country. WPSU’s Sydney Roach spoke with Jessie Beers-Altman, the documentary’s producer and director, ahead of Monday’s premiere on WPSU-TV at 9 p.m.
Here's that conversation:
Sydney Roach:
Jessie Beers-Altman, thanks for talking with us.
Jessie Beers-Altman:
Thanks for having me here.
Sydney Roach:
First off, I just want to say congratulations on finishing the documentary. I understand you and the production team have been working on it for quite some time, right?
Jessie Beers-Altman:
Yeah, that's right. We started shooting this in March of 2023. We actually took a small crew to the unofficial girls' state championships for wrestling. So, the last state championships that were held outside of the sanctioning jurisdiction. And that was our first shoot. And then we proceeded to continue to shoot for basically the next year, following girls across the state for their inaugural season of the sport.
Sydney Roach:
So to give some background, you just kind of mentioned some of this, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, or PIAA, officially sanctioned girls' wrestling on May 17, 2023. Can you explain a little more of what led to the PIAA’s decision in May, and how Pennsylvania fits into a larger nationwide trend of girls' wrestling?
Jessie Beers-Altman:
Sure, yeah. So, girls have been wrestling for many years, but there were a couple of things that prompted some waves of higher numbers in terms of participation in the sport. So one thing that folks that I interviewed for the film pointed out was that, in the Olympics, in 2016, Helen Maroulis won the gold medal, and she was a wrestler for the U.S. and so that kind of got a lot of eyes on women's wrestling. And that really helped spawn the growth across the country.
And then basically the first girls' team in Pennsylvania was at J.P. McCaskey High School in the Lancaster area. They formed a team in the winter of 2020. And then basically from then on, there was a push to get more high schools across the state forming teams. And as those numbers grew, basically, (the PIAA) said, once you've reached the threshold of 100 schools forming teams, we will put this up for a vote to make it an official sport.
Sydney Roach:
And we have this clip from the documentary where some of the girls are talking about that effort. Let's take a listen.
“My senior year I went to the school board and propositioned to get a girls' team and it went through and now we got a girls' team.”
“We were so persistent on trying to get a girls' team and I was like, not harassing but being very persuasive to like my principal and the athletic director, and we ended up creating the first-ever girls' team in our school district in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.”
“I told my coach, ‘you actually have to put effort into recruiting other girls into making this happen,’ and we did. We recruited like, five, six girls and I wasn’t alone anymore.”
“Often times it is one girl that steps into the wrestling room, saying ‘I wanna wrestle,’ and she might get a coach that’s like ‘great, I’m happy to coach you,” and that coach takes the initiative and saying ‘I’m gonna start a girls' team and we’re just gonna get this started and we’ll figure it out and build it as we go along.”
Sydney Roach:
Now, even if you aren’t a sports fan, it may be obvious that wrestling is a male-dominated sport. When talking with these girl wrestlers, what did they say drove them to want to wrestle?
Jessie Beers-Altman:
Well, for a lot of them, they were following in the footsteps of their dads and brothers. It seems like, especially with the girls who have been wrestling for the last ten years and really started, you know, when they were small children, they oftentimes were the little sisters of big brothers who wrestled. And so these girls grew up in a wrestling room and kind of tagged along and then just found their way onto the mats.
And I think from there, you know, as you heard in that clip, it really, it really became imperative, especially for girls to have chances to wrestle for their high school teams, that they had a coach that was behind them. So sometimes it was official, you know, official teams that were formed and coaches getting behind that. And other times, it was just a coach welcoming a lone girl onto the wrestling mats where she was wrestling with all boys and growing in the sport that way.
Sydney Roach:
Why did you want to put together a documentary on girls' wrestling in Pennsylvania? What’s your personal interest?
Jessie Beers-Altman:
So, I come from an athletic background. I was a soccer player growing up, and I played in college, and I have such fond memories of what that gave me. The team aspect, like I said, the confidence, just feeling like my body was a tool that I could use and powerful and strong. And so I've always had a love for sports and I've always been interested in sports.
I actually came across this topic doing research for a different project here at WPSU. But when I heard about the imminent sanctioning of girls' wrestling, it seemed like a really interesting story. And the more that I dug into it, the more it was something that not only was relevant and timely as far as news and the state and, you know, sports in the state, but also it was something that I connected to as a former athlete. So you know, it always helps when you're really personally interested in a project to have momentum behind it.
Sydney Roach:
The part of the documentary about the stigma surrounding girls in wrestling stuck out to me. Let’s take a listen:
“I actually stopped wrestling for a whole year because I was tired of being the only girl. I felt really alone.”
“Training with the boys can be difficult. Sometimes I’ll go someplace new and the boys are very wary about practicing with me and then I get frustrated with that.”
“Boys definitely do not take it easy on the girls. There’s still that stigma; they don’t like to lose to a girl.”
“Sometimes there are boys at practice that are mean to you because they don’t want you to beat them up because you’re a girl.”
“It’s a little tough when it’s a girl. The way society is, you know, what the boys don’t like is when she whips him.”
Sydney Roach:
The last voice we heard in that clip was Coach Rob Waller of the All-American Wrestling Club in Latrobe. What reactions did you hear from the men you talked with think about girls’ wrestling?
Jessie Beers-Altman:
Yeah, I was really cautious going into this that I didn't want to interview just a bunch of men, and there's a lot of men in wrestling. And so there's a lot of male coaches in particular, but I really wanted to mainly hear from girls that are in the sport. And so most of the voices in the film are girls and young women who have championed the sport. But meeting Coach Waller in Latrobe was one of the highlights of making this film for me, because he really represented sort of the old guard coming around, and he says himself that he's pretty old school.
So, you know, for him to come around to girls' wrestling, he represents kind of this huge wave of male coaches and men in the sport who maybe at first weren't so receptive to it, but for whatever reason, came around to it. In Coach Waller's case, what really changed his own mind was his granddaughter, Gianna. She pestered him, you know, "Can I come wrestle? I want to come wrestle." And he kept saying, "No, no, this is a sport for boys. You can do dance. You can do cheerleading." And she was persistent, and she was persistent as a very small girl, 5 or 6 years old, and she sort of won him over and he let her start wrestling. And then from there, other girls joined his gym.
And now, and you'll hear this in the film, he says that he loves coaching girls and that he sees how hard they work and how they don't talk back like boys do. And so, he really represents hundreds or even thousands of men and coaches across the country who have come to see that this is something that is for everyone.
Sydney Roach:
Jessie Beers-Altman, thanks so much for speaking with us.
Jessie Beers-Altman:
Thank you so much.
