Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union sanctioned girls wrestling to start the sport this upcoming year and Guthrie County schools have partnered together to offer a team. 

Panorama Athletic Director Mike Kaulzrich says that all the Guthrie County schools including West Central Valley, Adair-Casey/Guthrie Center and Panorama will share a program until the number of female wrestlers grows. Kaulzrich discusses another reason for the sharing agreement. 

“Obviously, there’s only going to be one classification, so our girls will be going up against girls from (West Des Moines) Valley and Iowa City, West and Dowling (Catholic in Des Moines) and all the big schools. So we just felt like sharing this first couple of years or whatever it takes is going to give our girls an advantage to equal that playing field.”

Kaulzrich explains the schools decided Panorama would be the best fit to be the host school due to the type of facilities. 

“Obviously we have a wrestling room. Our weight room is really, really big and long. And so that way it can fit a couple of matches in there and whatnot. We’re also going to utilize the space that hasn’t been utilized in the past. We’re going to use our auditorium stage for a lot of our stuff. We have a huge backdrop in our stage so we can keep our girls in a safe, safe area. And our boys will practice up there, too. We’ll rotate.”

Kaulzrich hopes with all the schools combined they will get 20 girls to wrestle in the upcoming year. He adds the next step is finding a coach and getting the schedule together.