In the wrestling room in the back of the MacArthur High School gymnasium, you’ll find the 17-member girls wrestling team honing its craft.
It wouldn’t be uncommon to find the music bumping as the girls paired off to work on a move or running laps around the room to cool down from a long practice.
While the scene may sound like a day’s work for any high school sports team, the girls wrestling team at the suburban Long Island high school is a bit of a rarity.
While high school wrestling — and girls’ high school wrestling, in particular — has been growing across the country, MacArthur was the first all-girls high school wrestling team in Nassau County.
It’s a distinction that the team — coached by Nick Rausenberger and Travis Cooksey and captained by senior Gabbi Schechtman — has taken pride in throughout its first season in existence.
“I think girls wrestling is being seen in a new light,” Schechtman said. “I think that women’s wrestling is growing around the country, especially on Long Island. And now that there’s developed girls teams, I think the stigma around women’s wrestling is really decreasing.”
In Nassau County, MacArthur and Uniondale High School are the only all-girls wrestling teams at the high school level, and in Suffolk, there are just five sanctioned high school girls teams.
The MacArthur program includes girls not just from the district, but also from other schools such as JFK Bellmore, Farmingdale, Syosset, Mepham, Herricks and Seaford.
It’s a mix of athletes whose skills range from having become involved in the sport at a young age to those who have stepped onto the mat for the first time.
Their introductions to the sport can vary from having a family member or friend compete to simply hearing an announcement at school and wanting to try something new, but regardless, the passion for wrestling is evident.
“It’s part of my life now and I love it so much,” said junior Justine Zheng, who attends Seaford High School and picked up the sport for the first time this year.
Girls wrestling has become one of the fastest-growing high school sports in the country with the number of participants across both genders increasing.
In New York, there was a 63 percent increase in high school girls wrestling participation from the 2023-24 academic year to the current academic year, according to data provided to The Post by NYSPHSAA.
Nationwide, the number of girls participating in high school wrestling jumped to 50,000 in 2023, according to a report from the Associated Press.
In its first year, McArthur didn’t compete in dual meets, instead entering girls wrestling tournaments on Long Island, primarily in Suffolk County.
It competed in tournaments in Huntington, Bay Shore and Copiague, Rausenberger said.
The program will compete in the Nassau County girls wrestling championships this weekend, and Rausenberger is confident he’ll have several wrestlers qualify for a spot in state championships.
Members of the team have noticed the impact the program has had in encouraging other girls to get involved with the sport.
“There’s also like a bunch of younger girls that come to the tournaments and younger brothers and they’ll like see, like, a bunch of girls just, like, being strong and it definitely inspires them,” said Gauri Sharma, a sophomore from Herricks. “I know a lot of girls from my school, they come up to me, they’re not even interested in wrestling, but they’re like, ‘You’re so cool.’ This is like opening a door, like, ‘I wanna try this.’ Especially me when I was in sixth grade, I didn’t even know what wrestling was. And I just, like, discovered it one day.”
“I think next year we’ll definitely have more girls because we’re getting more recognized now,” said Sophia Lombardo, a sophomore from Farmingdale. “Just by word of mouth from all the girls from different districts. So I really hope this team can grow in the next season.”
That’s the hope of Rausenberger as well, whose daughter is a member of the team and envisions the MacArthur program being a starting point for other girls high school teams in the county.
“The goal for this is to have these girls know that it’s OK to come in here and then hopefully other girls from your school try it out in the years to come,” he said. “And then enough of them come where they can then break off and become their own team.
“That’s how we can help grow this. And, you know, first and foremost, and the most important thing, is just to let the girls out there that are like, ‘I don’t know if I want to try it because it’s such a stigma that it’s a guy sport,’ come give it a shot. Come take a look at it. You may like it. That’s kind of the philosophy that I have.”
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