USA Wrestling, in partnership with the Greg Strobel Management Fund and thru a non-public donation, has introduced the six recipients of the newly established Girls’s School Development Fund — a landmark program offering strategic funding to assist the expansion and sustainability of girls’s faculty wrestling.
This 12 months’s recipients embrace Alara Boyd of Brown College, Maya Letona of Columbia College, Kendra Ryan of Northwestern College, Kevin Pine of UNLV, Amani Jones of Oklahoma State College and Alejandro Torres of Arizona State College.
“As a recipient, this can make a significant affect by giving me the chance to develop inside wrestling from a unique aspect,” stated Amani Jones, assistant coach at Oklahoma State’s Cowgirl Wrestling Membership. “I’ve spent most of my life as an athlete, and now I’m capable of develop as a coach whereas giving again to a sport that has given me a lot. With the ability to assist create alternatives for the subsequent era that weren’t at all times out there to girls earlier than is actually particular to me.”
Every recipient of the Girls’s School Development Fund will obtain an annual $5,000 stipend for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 tutorial years. As a result of Columbia College will formally add girls’s wrestling as a varsity sport beginning within the 2027-28 tutorial 12 months, Letona will obtain a stipend just for the 2026-27 tutorial 12 months.
“Girls’s wrestling continues to develop quickly in america, and USA Wrestling is proud to be a driving pressure behind that progress,” stated USA Wrestling Govt Director Wealthy Bender. “At USA Wrestling, it’s our responsibility to establish revolutionary methods to advance the game whereas offering equitable alternatives for girls’s wrestling. USA Wrestling is happy with the six inaugural recipients of the Girls’s School Development Fund, who proceed to put money into girls’s wrestlers throughout the nation.”
The Girls’s School Development Fund was established with an preliminary $40,000 joint funding from USA Wrestling, the Greg Strobel Management Fund and a non-public donation to complement the annual pay of chosen girls’s faculty membership coaches who’re actively advancing girls’s wrestling at their establishments and driving the game on the collegiate degree.
“My want is to see girls’s wrestling increase within the collegiate ranks to create extra alternatives for younger girls to study and develop,” stated the fund’s personal donor. “I don’t want our younger girls, who’re our future leaders in society, selecting between a tutorial main and their ardour to compete within the sport of wrestling. I’d not be the place I’m at this time with out others investing in me. This chance to put money into coaches and younger girls was one thing I used to be closely drawn to.”
Given the depth of expertise amongst coaches within the applicant pool, the choice committee — composed of USA Wrestling workers and volunteers — chosen six recipients for this 12 months’s inaugural grant program. Recipients of the Girls’s School Development Fund are present NCAA Division I girls’s faculty membership wrestling coaches.
“Wrestling has traditionally been considered as a boys’ sport that women do. It’s time to shift that narrative towards a extra inclusive perspective, and we’re dedicated to offering alternatives for women and girls inside USA Wrestling,” stated Greg Dana, USA Wrestling’s Director of Finance and Administration. “We’re at a pivotal second when that narrative can change completely as extra women enter, compete, and lead within the sport. Girls’s wrestling is reaching a essential mass, and what we construct now can form the game for generations.”
The Greg Strobel Management Fund, initially generally known as The Greg Strobel Management Academy, was based in 2020 to honor Greg Strobel’s legacy after his passing. Our mission is guided by 4 pillars: self-discipline, accountability, household and a lifetime of excellent habits, with the objective of supporting athletes and coaches past the mat. His classes on being a profitable wrestler or coach had been at all times energetic classes that prolonged past competitors. These classes impressed the founding members — his daughters, Jen Baldwin and Christine Napoli, and Chris and Lori Ayers — to honor his reminiscence by creating the Greg Strobel Management Academy.
