Clover Hill High School made Chesterfield County history by hosting the first girl’s wrestling meet on Dec. 16, 2025. Wrestling has had a major boost in the past few years and is becoming more popular and that is shown through the influx of female wrestlers.
The growing popularity of wrestling heavily impacted the Clover Hill Wrestling Team, however, the girls who wrestled in years prior put in a lot of work to gain more members for the team. They campaigned for friends to join along with working with coaches to create an Instagram account for the Girl’s Wrestling team to gain more online recognition.
Junior Mina Lee from the Girl’s Wrestling Team has wrestled for 2 years and helped in the efforts to grow the team.
“Well throughout the beginning of the school year, I’ve been encouraging girls to join the team. I asked my head coach if we could make a girls wrestling Instagram account to reach more girls and a lot were interested,” Lee said.
Sophomore Maddie Ramsey, a first year wrestler with Clover Hill, spoke about her experience as a new wrestler on the growing team.
“This is my first year as it is for a lot of other girls too which made me feel less alone and more excited to learn with everyone,” Ramsey said.
Ramsey spoke about why she chose to start wrestling this year.
“I started wrestling because I wanted to be more active again and my boyfriend encouraged me to try it,” Ramsey said.
The team felt incredibly proud of having the privilege to host the first girls wrestling meet in Chesterfield County and the captains of the team explained the honor and surreal feeling of being the first captains.
Lee disclosed how it felt to be one of two of the first girls wrestling captains.
“It honestly feels really crazy and exciting. It’s crazy to think me and Taniya are the first official girls wrestling team captains. It’s kinda unreal and it makes me happy that our sport is growing, not only in our region, but globally. It makes me excited for what’s to come in next years for our school’s girls team and for others as well,” Lee said.
Several girls spoke about how they felt about how their first meet went and how they can improve for the future.
“What went best is even after losing, listening to encouraging words from my teammates, picking myself up and winning my next match!” Ramsey said.
Lee disclosed her feelings about the meet.
“The best thing about our first girls meet was that a lot of our newer wrestlers got their first wins and losses, and it was good not only for me, but the girls who won were extremely proud of themselves and the girls who lost should also be proud of themselves because they went out there and wrestled. Not a lot of girls do that, but it’s a growing sport and we should be proud of being a part of the growth, and losing is just another thing to be excited about to know there’s more learning to do. Everyone knows losing is a part of winning,” Lee said.
