Rocklin, Nor Cal, Stellar Massive Female Grappling Tournament

What would best describe our viewpoint of any girl’s wrestling tournament or event in the year 2019?

Lower our expectations?

Moderate our expectations?

Have greater expectations?

The 2019 girl’s wrestling event in Rocklin, California has evolved into an annual competition and viewing the advertising emanating from the Placer County Visitor’s Bureau, this is the largest event of its type yet.

It is billed as the Women’s Wet Coast: Tournament of Champions.

We were on the fence as to whether we would attend.

The challenge in writing about this is that the general public has no idea who any of the wrestlers are, high school or college. Why is that significant?

Why would you write about something that few care about?

Now don’t get us wrong. We have attended the girl’s wrestling tournaments in Ranch Cordova and Vallejo, California. Were they well attended? Yes.

By the choir.

Everyone there is a believer. The participants. The parents. The siblings. The coaches.

The choir.

Wait a minute. Not all there believe that the girls should be included. Especially some of the boys who wrestled.

What about those outside of the church building? Will they be there too?

Not many.

Why not? Because they don’t know enough about the wrestlers to care enough to come.

It’s not because women’s wrestling isn’t a popular sport. It is. It’s just that there is no plan in place to promote and turn the girls into stars, say like boy’s football.

Which now plays on Netflix and ESPN.

After much debate, we decided to come.

It was a cold gray day in Northern California. The event would take place at the Hardwood Palace located in Rocklin, a part of Placer County.

Placer County, as of the 2010 census, has a population of 348,432.

Placer County is included in the Greater Sacramento metropolitan area. It is in both the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada regions, in what is known as the Gold Country. The county stretches roughly 65 miles from Sacramento's suburbs at Roseville to the Nevada border and the shore of Lake Tahoe.

Helpful info.

We want to know more about the Hardwood Palace.

At hardwoodpalace.com they educate, “The Hardwood Palace is a state-of-the-art basketball and sports facility complete with EIGHT beautiful maple hardwood courts, each with their own electronic scoreboards. All courts can also be converted for Volleyball, Futsal and almost any other sport that requires a hardwood floor and/or a net.”

Apparently including girls wrestling.

Sounds very impressive. We’re becoming more interested. Excited even.

As we drove down Industrial Avenue towards Tinker Road we saw something that surprised us once again.

The sign said “overflow parking” should head this direction. So the regular parking lot is full? For girls wrestling? Really?

We’ve never seen that before.

After parking we were in for another nice surprise.

A bus would shuttle us to the event. Again. All of this for a girl’s wrestling tournament? Usually the girls have to be second fiddle to the boys at tournaments. Here at their own girl’s only tournament, the parking lot is full and you get a shuttle bus to take you up to the door.

All of those clippings about the growth in girls wrestling is indeed very true.

Once inside we were in for the surprise of our wrestling lives.

This huge facility was crowded with high school and college female wrestlers along with their coaches and family. There were thousands of people in attendance, everything was well organized and professional.

There were teams of female wrestlers everywhere. Some of the colleges included Eastern Oregon University, Santa Rosa Junior College, Southern Oregon University, Umpqua Community College, Skyline College, Menlo College, Life Pacific University, Life University, Central Christian College of Kansas, Pacific University and York College among others.

This is shocking.

The new world of dignified, legitimate female wrestling, recognized by the school systems as a legitimate sport is here.

Finally.

If the NCAA finally recognizes female wrestling as an emerging sport, and based upon what we saw in Rocklin they should, in terms scholarships offered, it will tremendously change the landscape. If we think that girls wrestling has mushroomed now, as an official Emerging Sport, there will be a massive explosion by comparison.

We wrote an article on the subject in November of 2019.

NCAA Women's Wrestling As An Emerging Sport, Great For ...

Massive credit goes to the organizer and Director, Mr. Don Martinez.

FCI had a chance to meet with Mr. Martinez and spoke to him about the possibly of the future including a professional product where the freestyle women will compete at a Dojo against women from the Lady Pro circuit, MMA female warriors and Fem Competitors from our competitive women’s submission wrestling world.

Female Competition International would love to be a part of that.

We also floated the idea that future FCI events would also include gymnasts, dancers, competitive cheer, CrossFit Girls, Fitness and other female sports and entertainment disciplines at the same event.

We’re certain the corporate advertisers would love that.

More kudos are in order.

Great thanks also to Placer Tourism. Let’s meet them.

At placertourism.com they introduce themselves, “Placer Valley sits at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California. We are a family friendly community, and the perfect choice for your next event! Hotels, dining, shopping and more - we have it all!”

Living in Northern California ourselves, we can attest to that. They have the great life in abundance.

Regarding presenting youthful events like the girls wrestling they add, “Each year, Placer Valley welcomes some of the biggest title events in youth, amateur and professional sports in the West. State-of-the-art sports facilities, team-friendly hotels, awards banquet space, professional tournament organizers and convenient access off Interstate 80 make Placer Valley Northern California's sports destination.”

Speaking of destinations, competitive female wrestling has arrived in all of its glory.

“More enduringly than any other sport, wrestling teaches self-control and pride. Some have wrestled without great skill - none have wrestled without pride.”… Dan Gable

What we noticed is that the skill level has greatly improved. Where parents were once hesitant, now they seem to be fully comfortable with the idea of their daughter being a wrestler.

When we rode over on the bus, we sat next to a father who fit that above description.

We also noticed that wrestling is a very rough sport. One girl appeared to absorb a painful shoulder injury while another suffered a very painful knee sprain.

This is the wonderful thing about life.

Just when you think you know it all ahead of time, like we thought we did regarding female wrestling at the high school and collegiate level, you can be proved wonderfully wrong.