By Brenda Erdahl
The Annandale-Maple Lake (ANML) wrestling team made history last year when they sent their first female wrestler to state. The program continues to break barriers this year with the formation of an all-girls wrestling team.
When Abby Gindele won the section tournament to advance to the only second ever Minnesota Girls State Wrestling tournament in March of 2023, she was one of two female athletes on the ANML team. At that time, she and teammate Elsie Triplett expressed their hope that one day they wouldn’t have to wrestle with the boys if they didn’t want to, that they would have a team all to themselves, their own girls wrestling team. Their plan was to show the other young women in their schools that they had the power to be anything they wanted to be.
Their dream came true less than a year later when 16 young women stepped onto the mat for wrestling practice, Nov. 20th.
“This has never been done before and we’re doing it,” said wrestling coach Jamie Langley.
Girls wrestling isn’t new just to ANML. It’s only been a sanctioned sport in the Minnesota State High School League since the 2021-2022 season with the first state tournament held March 5, 2022, at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. Female wrestling has however, been part of the Olympics since 2004 and it’s been around at the college level for about as long.
In Annandale-Maple Lake, the program is open to all 7th through 12th grade girls. Of its 16 members, the majority are in 10th grade and below, which bodes well for the future of the program, Langley said, and they have a good mix of Annandale and Maple Lake students. Many come from wrestling families where siblings and/or parents participated in the sport. Some are multi-sport athletes and almost all of them took part in summer wrestling programs, so they are not completely new to the experience, Langley said. To many, it’s a big deal to be a part of this ground-breaking first program. Even the coaches are a little overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.
A member of a wrestling family herself, Langley spent much of her young adult years trying to break into the predominantly male sport. She wrestled one season on the Anoka High School wrestling team, but she was more of a practice partner and never saw a match. After serving in the Marine Corp where she taught combative sports, she took a position as an assistant coach on the Coon Rapids High School wrestling team under Bob Adams. Again, the team was predominately boys with a sprinkling of girls; maybe five in the room on a good day, she said.
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