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

“There is no future for you,” 32-year-old Maroulis remembers her saying. “There were no scholarships.”

And they weren’t wrong.

It was years before women’s wrestling was included in the Olympics since its 2004 debut in Athens, and more than two decades before it was included in the NCAA’s Emerging Sports for Women program in 2020. Eligibility requires a minimum of 20 schools sponsoring collegiate and/or competitive club teams.

“There was no way,” Maroulis said.

Still, she forged her own path. Maroulis became a standout at Simon Fraser, a Division II school in Canada, where she won three of her four Women’s Collegiate Wrestling Association individual championships from 2011 to 2014. On Friday, she became the first U.S. wrestler to win three Olympic medals, including a bronze in Paris, a bronze in Tokyo and gold at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

In Paris, Maroulis also experienced another first: American women won two gold medals in wrestling at the Olympic Games. One of them went to Sarah Hildebrandt, whose sporting history is similar to Maroulis’.

When Hildebrandt started wrestling in Indiana, she competed against boys. She knew of only two other high school girls in the state who could wrestle. She, too, took unexpected paths and played a role in the sport’s rapid growth.

“Now there are 40 girls on my high school team,” Hildebrandt said. “I went to high school a while ago, but not that long.”

Hildebrandt’s high school anecdote is not an isolated case. The sport is becoming increasingly popular across the country.

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

“It grew so quickly,” Hildebrandt said.

Even at the college level.

When Hildebrandt wanted to pursue 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.

>The number of colleges offering the sport is currently staggering. In the 2022-23 academic year, nearly 800 female student-athletes competed on 51 NCAA teams in women’s wrestling. Ahead of the 2023-24 academic year, 76 NCAA schools announced they would sponsor the sport.

“The growth in college wrestling is just going to take over,” said Hildebrandt, who graduated from King in 2015. “There are so many more opportunities now. There is so much support. It’s exciting.”

Dominique Parrish, who took part in the Olympic Games for the first time in Paris, was also amazed at the college opportunities that exist today. The California native wrestled for Simon Fraser.

“There are so many different schools than when I was in school,” said Parrish, who ended her career at Simon Fraser in 2019.

The sport’s growth reached another major milestone this year: It was recommended for NCAA championship status by the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics, which oversees the NCAA’s Emerging Sports for Women program. If all three divisions approve the recommendation at the 2025 NCAA meeting, women’s wrestling will win its first NCAA championship in the winter of 2026.

“It’s going to be huge,” Maroulis said.

“I went to an NCAA tournament (men’s wrestling) and it was huge,” Parrish added. “I think it’s just going to be great for the sport to have the opportunity to build that kind of fan base.”

Acquiring championship status has helped numerous collegiate sports serve as training grounds for even more Olympians around the world.

Rowing was the first emerging sport to achieve championship status through the Emerging Sports for Women program, which was created in 1994 at the recommendation of the NCAA Gender Equity Task Force. As the pool of college talent grew, so did the U.S. Olympic success. Most notably, the U.S. women’s eight won gold in 2008, 2012 and 2016. In Paris, 52 Olympic rowers from 16 countries had ties to 23 NCAA schools. Of those, 12 went on to become Olympic medalists.

Next came water polo, which achieved NCAA championship status in 2000 as part of the Emerging Sports for Women program. At the 2012 Olympics, the U.S. women won their first of three consecutive gold medals – losing in the semifinals in Paris. The Paris Olympics featured 41 women’s water polo players from six different countries who had played at the NCAA level at 13 schools.

The most recent example is women’s beach volleyball, which was added to the Emerging Sports for Women program in 2012 and won its first NCAA championship in 2016. In Paris, both U.S. women’s pairs had already competed in NCAA beach volleyball – an Olympic first. They were also college teammates, with one pair playing together at LSU and the other in Southern California. In Paris, four other NCAA beach volleyball teams competed for Canada, Spain and Latvia.

Women’s wrestling could follow the same trend.

Four of the U.S. team’s wrestlers competed at an NCAA school at the Paris Games. And in total, four American women have won a medal at the 2024 Olympics, including Kennedy Blades, who has committed to wrestle for Iowa this year and won silver on Sunday. Amit Elor, a 20-year-old who attends a community college in California, won gold on Tuesday.

“It’s very gratifying to see the growth (of women’s wrestling) and how our younger generation is stepping up and our veterans are leading and mentoring along the way,” USA Wrestling women’s national coach Terry Steiner said at the Team USA Media Summit in April. “You have a person like Sarah (Hildebrandt) being in the training room helping these younger guys. It’s inspiring to see that on both sides. I couldn’t be happier to be a part of it.”

The age difference between the four American medalists was more than a decade, underscoring the progress made in nurturing young talent in the United States.

“It’s just so cool to see this whole spectrum,” Maroulis said. “I think it shows that we’re growing and things are just getting better.”

Success on the Olympic stage, Hildebrandt said, would only elevate the sport’s status. This, in turn, could fuel its growth at the collegiate level. If there is one major area of ​​growth opportunity, Maroulis said it is the Division I level. Only four Division I schools – Iowa, Presbyterian, Sacred Heart and Lindenwood – said they plan to sponsor the sport in the 2023-24 school year.

“I just can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when we have (more Division I schools),” Maroulis said. “There will be more opportunities. There will be scholarships.”

There will be a path. One that could lead to the USA becoming an Olympic power in women’s wrestling in the near future. A path that trailblazers like Maroulis and Hildebrandt have helped to pave.

“You see more and more people starting to believe in themselves that they can do this and step on the mat, and these gold medals reinforce all of that. It’s such an honor to be a part of it,” Hildebrandt said. “I just think more and more women are going to be involved in the sport. There’s going to be more opportunities, more support, and that’s only going to fuel the success of American women’s wrestling.”

“There have been many women before me who have paved the way. There are women who never got to achieve their dream of going to the Olympics, but because they were on the mat, they made sure that women’s wrestling was added to the Olympics,” Maroulis added. “It was an honor to carry on that and pass the baton. I’m so excited to pass that baton. You see these young girls now on these Olympic teams, like Amit and Kennedy, so it’s been passed on to them. And they’re going to do great things with it.”