Piper’s Sara Lake headed to Kansas’ first sanctioned girls state wrestling tourney
When Sara Lake walks through the halls of Piper High School, she’ll often get classmates and faculty wishing her luck and congratulating her on her latest sporting achievements.
They say they saw Lake’s performances on a live stream or heard from a friend that Lake had emerged victorious yet again.
Lake, a junior at Piper High School, is the star of Piper’s wrestling team and is set to compete in Kansas’ first sanctioned girls state wrestling tournament Thursday in Salina.
“It means a lot to me,” Lake said. “I am just overexcited to do at least two years — in my junior and senior years — in sanctioned wrestling.”
After over three years of planning and preparation through the Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA), Kansas follows the footsteps of nearby Iowa and Missouri in sanctioning a girls-only wrestling state tournament.
In the past, girls competed with boys, and in rare instances across the nation also qualified for the state tournament. Kansas schools previously held unsanctioned girls state tournaments, with results not officially recognized by KSHSAA.
“The reality of it is in high school the muscle mass catches up. When they’re in middle school, boys and girls, there’s not a big difference between them as far as muscle goes,” Piper wrestling coach Todd Harris said. “And so a kid with the best technique usually wins.
“But by high school, that strength that boys gain, upper body strength especially, makes a huge difference in a sport like wrestling.”
In the past, Lake would practice and compete against other boys, allowing her to dominate the mat when she’d come up against other girls.
“It helps me a lot with using technique because I know I can’t outmuscle (boys),” Lake said. “But it also makes me a lot stronger for when I wrestle girls I have strength and technique to use with them. Also when I fight boys along the way it helps as well.”
Lake is the only girl on Piper’s wrestling team, but the sport as a whole has exploded within the state since being sanctioned by KSHSAA. In the 2018-19 school year, Kansas had just 376 girls wrestling competitively, but that number jumped up to 972 in 2019-20.
This season, Lake is 24-0 and enters the tournament as the top seed in the 136-pound weight class.
“I think we’ve given (girls) the opportunity of something they can compete in and they like to compete just like boys do,” KSHSAA assistant executive director Mark Lentz said. “And we have found out nationally, not just in Kansas, that girls want to wrestle, they want to compete and have that opportunity.”
There are complications with this year’s tournament, however. Because of contract negotiations far in advance of the state tournament, KSHSAA originally scheduled just two regionals and a one-day state meet back when the participation count was sitting around 400 girls. KSHSAA didn’t expect such a large jump in girls wrestlers and it has put the organization in a tough spot regarding brackets and National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) rules.
Initially, the plan was for four girls to advance to state from each region, creating an eight-girl bracket for each weight class. But with the swell in participation, two more girls per weight class per region were added to the state tournament, creating 12-girl brackets. This meant that four girls per weight class earned byes through the first round.
While this sounds great for wrestlers earning a bye, because of wrestling’s consolation bracket format, there is a small possibility a wrestler would have to compete in six matches in a day. But that’s against NFHS’s five match per day maximum — something a two-day tournament would solve.
KSHSAA’s solution? A forfeit.
“Obviously we know that things are going to have to change for next year and we’ll going to grow from this year,” Lentz said. “So our board will have to look at we may grow into or have the conversation that it becomes a two-day state tournament next year for girls.”
It’s a rare instance and one that wrestlers of Lake’s caliber shouldn’t have to worry about, but it’s still a problem nonetheless that shouldn’t exist for long at the highest level of high school sports.
“The tournament itself I would like to see go to a two-day tournament, just like the boys, and that it becomes, obviously as we grow more I think we’ll have some separate classes, not just one all-class, but I’d like to see a 16-girl bracket,” Harris said.
But with plans solidified for 2019, Harris, Lake and the 130 other girls competing at the state tournament can only deal with the hand they’ve been dealt.
“We hope it doesn’t affect us obviously because we plan to be in the final,” Harris said. “Which would mean she would only have three matches on the entire day on Thursday.”
Opening ceremonies for the state tournament begin at 8:30 a.m. Thursday at Tony’s Pizza Event Center in Salina.