Through four years of sanctioned girls wrestling in North Dakota, athletes, coaches look back on sport's rise

GRAND FORKS — 2025 marks year four of sanctioned girls wrestling in North Dakota, meaning freshmen on varsity in year one are now seniors going for glory one more time.

Grand Forks’ program has grown alongside the sport’s popularity, now with a roster of 28 in 2024-25, including eight middle schoolers.

It’s a sight senior Bryn Larson could have only dreamed of when she first started wrestling in sixth grade.

“It was listed as an intramural sport in sixth grade, and I was like, ‘Sure, why not, I’ll give it a go,’” Larson recalled. “All day before practice, I was like, ‘Are you doing wrestling? Is anyone else?’ None of my classes, no kids were doing wrestling,” she added.

It turned out she was only one of two girls to show up that day.

Instead of quitting, she pressed on, learning the ropes of the sport through her middle school career.

“I wanted to show other people that they could do it too if they wanted,” Larson said.

After three years wrestling against boys, girls wrestling became sanctioned in North Dakota right before her freshman year, giving her a chance to compete on a bigger stage and against other girls.

“I ran home to my mom screaming, I was so excited,” Larson recalled. “Then we found out that my middle school coach was going to transition to be the high school girls coach, so I was over the moon,” she added.

That coach, Matt Berglund, is still with the program, and says getting the sport to this level comes from selling how anyone can get involved.

“In simplest terms, a lot of girls wouldn’t come out because they didn’t want to wrestle against boys, which is pretty understandable, but now that they actually can compete in practice and not have, maybe, a disadvantage in strength in the upper weights, you just see this huge growth,” Berglund said.

Just like any sport, however, it takes hard work to make it, and through the years, Grand Forks has seen its interest grow exponentially.

“A lot of these girls are second, third generation family wrestlers,” Berglund said. “Their older brothers, their dads, even their grandpas wrestled, but they never had the opportunity themselves,” he said.

The program has already produced two state champions: Alyssa Johnson and Emily Novak.

There’s internal belief they are far from the last to be crowned champion.

“We have current state champs, but there’s definitely some people here that will be state champs,” Larson said.

There’s also belief the sport is not done growing.

“As long as you have a good attitude, good work ethic, you can be good at it in a pretty short amount of time if you put in the time,” Berglund said.

State qualifiers for boys and girls will hit the mats starting February 20 at the Fargodome, and the tournaments will be televised on WDAY Xtra.

Isak Dinesen joined WDAY-TV as a reporter in September 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist at WAOW-TV in Wausau, Wisconsin for three years. He graduated from NDSU in 2020, majoring in Journalism and minoring in Sports Communication at MSUM.