This story previously ran in our December 2024 issue.
As you walk towards the wrestling room, the sound of squeaking shoes scraping across the mat fill your ears, the shut door doing little to drown out the screams and cheers of teammates. The heat of the room blasts your face as you walk in, making it impossible to ignore the practice happening right in front of your eyes.
Coaches and student-athletes, working hard, are preparing for their first wrestling match as an official EHS team. However, it wasn’t always this way.
In the 2023-24 school year, there wasn’t a girls wrestling team but rather a club. They followed every PIAA (Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association) regulation but weren’t considered an official school sport — allowing girls to practice separately from the boys.
For sophomore Brynn Koberlein, this was a huge factor in starting her high school wrestling career.
“I have an older cousin who wrestled and she had to wrestle on a boys team because there was no girls team,” Koberlin said. “I always wanted to wrestle, but I didn’t want to be on a boys team, I wanted there to be a girls team. So when I saw that opportunity, I wanted to take it.”
Junior Olivya Kroope felt similarly. Through her brother, Kroope had been involved with wrestling for eight years. Kroope started her wrestling career practicing with the boys in her freshman year when there was no girls team nor club. While Kroope had hoped for a girls wrestling team, practicing with the boys was the only way for her to wrestle for the school, and she refused to settle for less. Following her passion, she wouldn’t let anything stand in the way between her and wrestling.
“It’s [wrestling] something that hits you head on. You do it, or you don’t. There’s no in-between,” Kroope said.
Alongside coaches and parents, the girls went to the School Board, advocating for the girl’s wrestling club to become an official sport at EHS. And it was worth it. Their reward of scoring as high as they possibly could in their recent match against Stroudsburg, winning 78-0.
For their first season as an official school sport, the girls wrestling team is thrilled to have the highly esteemed Thad Smith as their Head Varsity Coach. Coming out of retirement, Smith, alongside coaches (and the creators of the girls wrestling club) Steven Kroope, Scott Shotwell, Trevor Schenck, and Jackson Karrart. The coaching staff is setting the precedent of being the team to beat, but teaching these girls that academics are just as important as sports.
“Sports teach so much more than just the sport, and that’s how I coach,” Smith said. “I stress scholar-athlete, not dumb jock.”
