Wrestling With the Future

On a brisk September evening in North Durham, Riverside High School’s basketball courts are covered baseline to baseline with wrestling mats. Head coach Matt Hall’s exuberant instructions echo off the gym walls: “Jog!” “Shots!” “Chest up!” 

About 20 wrestlers march around the mats, following his commands. As sweat and the sound of heavy breathing build, Hall directs the athletes to circle up. At the center, leading the team through their stretches is Riverside’s returning 152-pound state champion, senior Stephanie Diaz Mendoza. 

Women’s sports have seized the spotlight in the U.S. over the past few years, reaching record viewership and participation. While mainstream sports like basketball and soccer command most of the national attention, girls’ wrestling has quietly become the fastest-growing scholastic sport in the country. 

According to the National Federation of High School Sports, 74,000 girls hit the mats across the country in 2024, a 15% increase from 2023. That total included 1,917 in North Carolina, a state where only a few hundred girls participated in prior years, according to USA Wrestling. This surge of interest has led the NCAA to elevate women’s wrestling as a Division I championship sport for this season. 

When the mild-mannered 5-foot-2 Mendoza stepped on the mat for the first time four years ago as a freshman, she was the only female on Riverside’s team. She decided to join after conversations with friends about the sport piqued her interest. Wrestling, she thought, could be an outlet for her. “I was going through a lot my freshman year, and I guess the way I could take it out was by me pushing myself more and more than I thought I could,” she said. 

Mendoza said she “wasn’t a really sporty kid,” and while her brother had a brief stint as a middle school wrestler, she didn’t attend any of his matches. 

“I didn’t even know how to do a stance; I didn’t know what a shot was,” she said. “I felt like I kept embarrassing myself.” Still, she had drive and found early success, placing fourth in her first tournament, the Jim King Orange Invitational in November 2022. 

In many ways, girls who wrestled even a few years ago were being made to fit into a sport designed for boys. Even the uniforms and gear “was all cut for boys,” Mendoza said. “It was so uncomfortable.”

The North Carolina High School Athletic Association began a girls’ division in the 2023-24 season, but in reality, wrestling is still coed: Most squads are predominantly male, and everyone trains and practices together. At Riverside, this is the first season they’ve had more than one female wrestler, with sophomores Isabelle Richie and Trinity Dennison joining the team. 

But wrestling with the boys has never been a deterrent for Mendoza. “I was into it before it became just a woman’s sport,” she said.

‘It’s Her Reconstitution’

December’s early evening twilight arrived in Hillsborough. Inside the Orange High School gymnasium, the Jim King Girls Invitational Tournament was playing out across multiple mats. 

The 43-year-old tournament added its girls’ event in 2022, the same tournament that Mendoza earned her first spot on a podium. This year, it hosted 117 girls from 27 teams. The sound of bodies crashing onto the floor, coaches yelling instructions, parents screaming encouragement, and referee whistles pulse together until they become ambient sound. 

The tournament marked a return to the mat for Mendoza after she suffered her first scholastic loss since her sophomore season, dropping an 18-4 major decision to Taylor Williams of Glenn High School in Kernersville in the final of Cedar Ridge High School’s Red Wolf Girls Classic in Hillsborough. 

Mendoza was quick to credit her opponent’s skill and is trying not to dwell on it:  “I actually enjoyed my loss because it showed me what I need to work on,” she said. 

But Hall worries it was related to issues she’s grappling with off the mat.

Over the summer, Mendoza’s mother, father, and other family members, who are immigrants from Honduras, were detained by immigration authorities amid the Trump administration’s heightened enforcement across the country. In some instances, they were held for several days before being released. 

Hall is concerned that all the uncertainty is weighing heavily on her psyche. Mendoza seems exasperated, but resolute: “This is the world we live in now,” she said. 

She doesn’t understand why her parents would be targeted. “My mom never committed no crime. My dad is a taxpayer; he doesn’t even have a speeding ticket. They are good people.” 

But Mendoza has tapped into a well of resiliency throughout her high school career. In the second half of her freshman season, Mendoza found herself academically ineligible after missing classes. The forced hiatus gnawed at her, providing a spark to get “locked in” academically, as she put it. “I realized me skipping school wasn’t helping me,” she said. “Wrestling made me realize I wasn’t doing anything for my benefit.”

Before the start of her junior year, Mendoza’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Mendoza was prepared to forgo the season to be by her mother’s side. “I thought she was going to die,” she said. “I wanted to be there for her.” 

But her mother convinced her to stick with the sport she loved. “She was like, ‘If I’m gonna have to fight my own battles, then you’re going to have to fight your own, too.’”

During her junior season, Mendoza tore the lateral collateral ligament, or LCL, in her knee and suffered a separated shoulder. But leaning into her strength and fortitude, Mendoza persevered, entering the state championship tournament with a 20-0 record. A 14-12 victory over Kaylah Evans of Bandys High School in the championship match turned a season of struggle into triumph. 

The Jim King meet might have been that moment for her this season. “This tournament is a celebration of her hard work,” Hall said then. “It’s her reconstitution.”

Mendoza won her first match in the King Invitational by technical fall over Cece Maldonado of Southeast Alamance High School, 19-4. It’s wrestling’s version of a mercy rule after a competitor builds a 15-point lead. Mendoza then won her semifinal match by pinning Kyleigh Martin of Millbrook in 50 seconds.

But for Mendoza, winning the tournament would be just an ancillary achievement. The true prize she sought was selection as the tournament’s Most Outstanding Wrestler, an award the coaches vote on and that has eluded Mendoza in her career. 

When Mendoza’s championship bout at 152 pounds was called to the mat, she took control from the initial whistle, opening a commanding lead into the second period against Sierra Gruber of Cardinal Gibbons. At 2:40 Mendoza pinned Gruber–another win, although she still went home without the Most Outstanding Wrestler title.

A Future in the Sport

Mendoza earned the opportunity to defend her state title after placing second in the NCHSAA 7A East Regional tournament last week, medically forfeiting in the final due to an injury. The girls’ tournament is scheduled for this Thursday and Friday at Greensboro’s First Horizon Coliseum.

Mendoza enters this last challenge with a 26-1 record. But maintaining the title will require her to overcome seven of the best wrestlers in the state.

With Mendoza’s growing list of titles and trophies, wrestling at the collegiate level seems like a foregone conclusion. But what comes next is uncertain. 

While the NCAA now sponsors women’s wrestling as a Division I sport, no North Carolina major college has a program. This includes schools with highly regarded wrestling pedigrees, such as NC State University. A spokesperson for the university told The Assembly it has no plans to create a women’s team. 

This has frustrated Mendoza as she weighs her educational needs and her athletic ambitions. “NC State would be the perfect school because I want to become a veterinarian,” she said. 

Some smaller North Carolina colleges field women’s wrestling teams. Greensboro College started a women’s program in 2020 and competes in NCAA Division III. The University of Mount Olive debuted its women’s team in 2022 and has had sustained success in Division II, winning over 60% of its matches. 

Neither appears inclined to move up to Division I. “We are completely happy at Division II,” Mount Olive Athletic Director Joey Higginbotham said. Three top N.C. wrestlers have already committed to women’s college teams–two out of state (Indiana Tech and Life University in Marietta, Georgia), and one at Montreat College, a small liberal arts school near Asheville that competes in the NAIA and is not part of the NCAA.

Mendoza said she feels a duty to continue with the sport after this season. “The decision to walk on the mat changed my whole life, so I feel like I owe it my whole life,” she said. “I want to show even the little girls that show up that watch me wrestle that if I can make a change, then they can, too.”