The Pleasant Valley School Board approved creating a girls wrestling team during their meeting on Thursday.

There are four girls who have been competing as members of the boys team this year, making it a coed team.

Eleventh-grader Lily Decker, who is one of the girls on the wrestling team, spoke during the public comment before the vote in support of forming a girls team.

“Our own district has almost six girls teams,” Decker said. “We should be able to wrestle them.”

Decker said having their own team would enable them to accumulate team points, just like the boys do.

“We should be afforded the same opportunity the rest of them have,” she said.

Decker said girls wrestling has been named the fastest growing sport in the country, but because they are competing at boys wrestling matches instead of girls matches, it limits their access to college recruiters. The recruiters who attend the boys matches are not interested in female athletes.

Decker said there are Division 1 colleges who are recruiting girls and giving them full scholarships, but girls wrestling in matches for boys don’t get seen by them and don’t get the same chance for scholarships.

The decision to sanction the girls team was not an easy vote. It was approved in 6-1 in favor of the girls team. Two board members were absent from the meeting.

John Gesiskie voted no, because he is concerned about having enough girls come out for the team, and having enough coaches for the competitions. Each mat has to have a coach at it, and most matches have four mats.

“I just have some concerns. In the last four years, we’ve had four different coaches for wrestling,” Gesiskie said. “I think we need to focus on one team at a time.”

Gesiskie is concerned that there aren’t enough female athletes for the program. He said that if there isn’t anyone in their weight classes on the other girls teams, then there can’t be a match. If there were more girls on the team, then there would be a better chance they would have someone to wrestle with in the match.

School board member Ryan O’Keefe said that even if there isn’t someone for them to wrestle in a single event in a match, there will be tournaments where there are more participants.

“There’s going to be a lot of opportunities at a tournament, so don’t just focus on the narrow. Focus on the big picture. My vote will be 100% yes for the PV girls,” he said.

Gesiskie responded that his focus is on what makes teams successful, based on his years of experience coaching. He thinks a girls team will pull coaches away from the boys team.

School board President Sue Kresge asked the district’s athletic director James Korcienski how they will make sure to have enough coaches.

Korcienski said that if the sport grows to the point that they need to split the coaching staff, then they will have to look at hiring more people.

“We will need to budget that in the future,” Korcienski said. “If we don’t try, we won’t know where we’re going to go with this. ... If it doesn’t work, we reevaluate and we stop.”

Korcienski said that he thinks the wrestling program has more stability now and will continue to grow with a consistent coaching staff.

“I think we have that stability to move forward. And again if we don’t take the leap and try it, we’ll never know how we make out,” he said.