Trailblazing U.S. Olympic wrestlers Helen Maroulis, Sarah Hildebrandt pave path for sport’s explosive growth

When three-time Olympic medalist Helen Maroulis started wrestling, she was 7 years old and immediately fell in love with it. Then, her parents told her to quit.  

"There's no future for you," the 32-year-old Maroulis recalled them saying. "There were no scholarships." 

They weren't wrong.  

Women's wrestling was still years away from its Olympic debut in 2004 in Athens and more than two decades from being added in 2020 to the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women's program, which requires a minimum of 20 schools sponsoring varsity teams and/or competitive club teams to be considered.  

"There wasn't a path," Maroulis said.   

Still, she paved her own way. Maroulis became a standout at Simon Fraser, a Division II school in Canada where she won three of her four individual Women's Collegiate Wrestling Association championships from 2011-14. On Friday, she became the first U.S. women's wrestler to earn three Olympic medals, which include a bronze in Paris, a bronze in Tokyo and gold at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.  

Also in Paris, Maroulis witnessed another first: U.S. women winning two golds in wrestling during an Olympic Games. One of those was won by Sarah Hildebrandt, whose story in the sport is similar to Maroulis'.  

When Hildebrandt started wrestling in Indiana, it was against boys. She was only aware of two other high school girls in the state to wrestle. She, too, blazed an unlikely trail and in the process played a role in the sport's rapid growth.  

"Now, there's 40 girls on my high school team," Hildebrandt said. "I went to high school a while ago, but not that long ago." 

Hildebrandt's high school anecdote is far from a one-off. The sport has blown up in popularity across the country.  

According to Wrestle Like a Girl, 44 states have sanctioned girls wrestling in their high school athletics association. Data from the National Federation of State High School Associations shows that in the 1998-99 academic year — around the time Maroulis started in the sport — there were 661 schools that reported a total of 2,361 girls wrestling across the U.S. In the 2022-23 data, those numbers were 6,545 schools and 50,016 girls. That's an 890% increase in schools and a 2,018% increase in girls wrestling.  

"It's grown so quickly," Hildebrandt said.  

Including at the college level.  

When Hildebrandt wanted to continue wrestling in college, she said she had fewer than 10 schools to choose from. She landed at King (Tennessee), a Division II school where she thrived.  

Now, the number of colleges offering the sport is hard to keep track of. In the 2022-23 academic year, nearly 800 student-athletes competed in women's wrestling across 51 NCAA teams. Before the 2023-24 academic year, 76 NCAA schools reported that they would sponsor the sport.  

"The growth in collegiate (wrestling), it's just going to take over," Hildebrandt, who graduated from King in 2015, said. "There's so much more opportunity now. There's so much support. It's exciting."  

Dominique Parrish, who became a first-time Olympian in Paris, also marveled at the college opportunities available now. The California native wrestled at Simon Fraser. 

"There are so many different schools than when I was going to school," said Parrish, who finished her Simon Fraser career in 2019.  

The sport's growth hit another critical milestone this year, getting recommended for NCAA championship status by the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics, which oversees the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program. If all three divisions approve the recommendation at the 2025 NCAA Convention, women's wrestling will get its first NCAA championship in the winter of 2026.  

"It's going to be huge," Maroulis said.  

"I've been to one NCAA (men's wrestling) tournament, and it was huge," Parrish added. "I think that having that opportunity for women to have that fan base is just going to do great things for the sport." 

Earning championship status has helped a number of collegiate sports to serve as the training grounds for even more Olympians across the world.  

Rowing was the first emerging sport to earn championship status through the Emerging Sports for Women program, which was established in 1994 based on a recommendation from the NCAA Gender Equity Task Force. As the college talent pool increased, so did the Olympic success of the U.S. Notably, the U.S. women's eight boat won gold in 2008, 2012 and 2016. In Paris, 52 women's Olympic rowers from 16 countries had ties to 23 NCAA schools. Of those, 12 became Olympic medalists.  

Water polo was next, earning NCAA championship status in 2000 out of the Emerging Sports for Women program. At the 2012 Olympics, the Team USA women won their first of three straight gold medals — they were upset in the semifinals in Paris. Forty-one women's water polo players at the Paris Olympics from six different countries had played at the NCAA level across 13 schools.  

Women's beach volleyball is the most recent example. It went from being added to the Emerging Sports for Women program in 2012 to its first NCAA championship in 2016. In Paris, both U.S. women's pairs had competed in NCAA beach volleyball — an Olympic first. Additionally, they were college teammates, with one pair playing together at LSU and the other at Southern California. There were four other NCAA beach volleyball products competing in Paris for Canada, Spain and Latvia.   

Women's wrestling could follow the same trend.  

Four Team USA women's wrestlers at the Paris Games had competed at an NCAA school. And four U.S. women overall medaled at the 2024 Olympics, including Kennedy Blades, who has committed to wrestle for Iowa this year and won silver Sunday. Amit Elor, a 20-year-old out of a community college in California, won gold Tuesday.  

"It's very satisfying to see the growth that (women's wrestling) has had and how our younger generation is stepping forward and really how our veterans are just leading and mentoring along the way," said USA Wrestling's women's national coach Terry Steiner, speaking at the Team USA Media Summit in April. "You have a person like Sarah (Hildebrandt), who is in the practice room, helping those younger people. It's inspiring to see it on both ends. I couldn't be happier to be a part of it." 

The ages of the four American medalists ranged by more than a decade, underscoring the progress made in developing younger talent in the U.S. 

"It's just so cool to see that whole spectrum," Maroulis said. "I think that shows that we're growing and things are just getting better." 

Success on the Olympic stage, Hildebrandt said, will only help elevate the sport's status. This, in turn, could help further its growth at the college level. If there's one major area of opportunity for growth, Maroulis said it's at the Division I level. Only four Division I schools — Iowa, Presbyterian, Sacred Heart and Lindenwood — reported sponsoring the sport in the 2023-24 academic year. 

"I just can't even imagine what it will be like when we have (more Division I schools)," Maroulis said. "There's going to be more opportunity. There's going to be scholarships."  

There will be a path. One that might lead to the U.S. becoming an Olympic power in women's wrestling in the near future. One that trailblazers like Maroulis and Hildebrandt helped pave.   

"You're seeing more and more people start to believe in themselves, that they can do this and step on the mat, and these gold medals kind of just feed all of that. It's such an honor to be a part of that," Hildebrandt said. "I just think more and more women are going to be involved in the sport. There will be more opportunities, more support, and it will just feed the success of American women's wrestling."  

"There were a lot of women that came before me that made a way. There are women that never got an Olympic dream, but because they were on the mat, they made it so that women's wrestling would get added to the Olympics," Maroulis added. "So to be continuing that and having the baton get passed, it's been an honor. I'm super excited to pass that baton on. You see these young girls now on these Olympic teams, like Amit and Kennedy, so it's been passed to them. And they're going to do great things with it."