Wrestlers from Maine warm up on the mat before a Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange meet last month at Northwest High School in Grand Island, Nebraska. This year marked the first time girls wrestling was involved in the annual series. Contributed photo by Ciara Farias

For 40 years, the Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange has been one of the Pine Tree State’s most anticipated high school mat events.

This summer, the annual dual series received a twist. For the first time in its history, girls teams were pitted against one another.

Last month, a group of the state’s top female grapplers made the trip for three dual meets — two at Pierce Junior/Senior High School in Pierce, Nebraska, and one at Northwest High School in Grand Island, Nebraska — against a team of Nebraska all-star wrestlers.

“I enjoyed it. Overall, it was a really good trip,” said Gardiner Area High School senior Ciara Farias. “It was definitely worth going. … I’m glad this was the first (girls team) to go. It was definitely a good experience.”

The boys series was hosted by Maine in early July at four different sites: Massabesic High School in Waterboro, Camden-Rockport Middle School, Dirigo High School in Dixfield and Noble High School in North Berwick.

The Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange was founded in 1984 by longtime Winslow coach and referee Wally LaFountain, a member of both the Maine Wrestling Hall of Fame and Maine Amateur Wrestling Alliance Hall of Fame. LaFountain, who led Winslow High School to state championships in 1958 and 1960, started the event as a goodwill series to promote and grow the sport in both states. The series flips host states each year.

The Maine all-star team was comprised of the top talent in the state, including Zady Paige and Piper Leone of Belfast; Kathleen Cote, Delaney Frost and Hannah Perro of Noble; Savannah Thyng of Massabesic; Lily Soper of Bucksport; Sophie Noyes of Skowhegan and Farias of Gardiner. The team also featured Oceanside’s Maddie Ripley wrestling in her final Maine-related event.

Ripley, the only female grappler in state history to win an open state tournament, a feat she achieved in 2023 and 2024, graduated in the spring. The 2023-24 Varsity Maine Female Athlete of the Year will wrestle next year at Wyoming Seminary, a prep school in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania. It’s considered the best prep wrestling program in the country, and both the boys and girls teams prevailed at the 2023-24 National Prep Wrestling Championships in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Gardiner Area High School senior Ciara Farias, right, competes in a match during the Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange last month. This is the first year girls wrestling is involved in the annual series. Contributed photo by Ciara Farias

“There was definitely a lot of good talent that was on my team,” Farias said. “They were definitely made up of some of the best. Having them there and their support, cheering us on and us cheering them on, was really good. When we warmed up before the tournaments, we talked about what moves we intended on working on during matches, and we’d work on those. When we warmed up, we had good wrestling partners — that helped us.”

The inclusion in the Maine-Nebraska Exchange continues a boom period in girls wrestling within the state of Maine. A total of 97 wrestlers competed at the girls wrestling state championships, the highest total ever for the tournament, and nearly double the amount who competed in 2023.

“It’s just so cool to see the girls and be a part of it. I think this is what so many girls have wanted for so long,” said Perro, who won the 100-pound title at the Maine girls wrestling championships and helped the Knights win the tournament’s first team title. “And now that it’s actually here, it brings up so many opportunities for girls. They don’t want to wrestle boys. … When I was younger, girls wrestling wasn’t that big, and if it was, it was in freestyle. It’s really cool to see it grow in folkstyle in high school.

“In Nebraska, they have straight-up girls wrestling teams on their high school team. I think Noble may have (its own) wrestling team next year — that’s what I keep hearing.”

Like Maine, girls wrestling is growing in Nebraska. The Nebraska School Activities Association voted to make girls wrestling a sanctioned high school sport in 2021, and had its own girls state tournament by 2022.

“It was different a lot different, they did some different style stuff,” Farias said of facing Nebraska wrestlers. “They have a lot more girls who wrestle down there. One of the coaches was talking to us when we got there. There’s 50 wrestlers (the school had) in one wrestling room, and 22 of them were girls.”

“They were really strong and quick,” Perro added. “A lot of them train year-round, and a lot of them do lifting programs through their school. It’s almost mandatory (there), and I feel that’s a big difference. For us, it’s highly spoken of but it’s not like you have to do it.”

Team Maine sits for a photo before the Maine-Nebraska Wrestling Exchange last month. Contributed photo by Ciara Farias

Perro said the Nebraska wrestlers also presented a different style on the mat.

“They’re really heavy on hand ties,” Perro said. “I feel like that was something we all tried to expect going into our matches. Watching each other wrestling, that’s all that we noticed. All they would do was grab your wrist (at the start of a match) and that’s how they would get control at first. In Maine, a lot of people go to tie up first, but they were really big (tying up) the hands.”

Nebraska swept all three days of competition, winning the duals 56-16, 61-30 and 49-24.

It wasn’t all work for the Maine team, however. While in Nebraska, the group had plenty of opportunities to play, including camping, fishing, riding ATVs and a zip line over a river.

“We went to a few different water parks,” Farias said. “We stayed at a cabin, we got to camp, have a fire. Staying at the cabin and hanging out by the river all day (was the most fun).”

“There was no water there — like in Maine, where everywhere you drive there’s at least a little pond or something,” Perro said. “When we were there, we had to drive 2½-3 hours just to get to a river. … There were cows in the river, which I had never seen before. It was so many acres of land and cows everywhere, that was probably my favorite part.”

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