This winter, opportunity met preparation for local girls’ athletics with the introduction of the Frederick County Public Schools wrestling program.
After girls’ wrestling was sanctioned by the VHSL in May 2025, the CSAs at Millbrook, James Wood and Sherando High School submitted a proposal to the school board, advocating for a program that would allow girls from each high school to come together as a team, under the guidance of one coaching staff.
Though there were initial setbacks, the team was eventually given the green light. Although the schools still compete as three separate rosters, FCPS wrestling offers an environment where girls can practice and travel as one team.
The program’s creation has already grown the sport, as the county has jumped from three girls wrestlers last season to eight this year.
FCPS head coach Elijah Doyle said he and Millbrook CSA Jared Uhler had been discussing the possibility of the team for a while, and were ready to submit a different proposal before the sport was sanctioned in the spring.
“We’ve talked over the years about the emergence and growth of women’s wrestling as a whole, especially at the high school level,” Doyle said. “I’m so thankful that the state has fully gotten on board. With all of that being said, before it was even sanctioned in Virginia officially, we put together a proposal back then to do almost like a club atmosphere, where we could include girls from the county to train together, even if it’s not in a sanctioned sport. Obviously, our timeline was shifted a little bit, given the time it was sanctioned.”
Though Doyle and Uhler had support from the county’s CSAs and boys’ head coaches, the process for getting the team off the ground wasn’t the smoothest. In October, the Frederick County school board decided not to recognize girls’ wrestling for the 2025-26 season.
This news was disappointing, but didn’t discourage Millbrook junior wrestler Amaya Shook. Shook, a girls’ state qualifier at 138 last season, has been wrestling since middle school.
As a freshman, she was the only girls’ wrestler in the county. Though she was grateful for the support she received from her male teammates, Shook was passionate about the need for an all-girls team.
With this in mind, she and her dad, Keith Shook, made their case during a school board meeting on Oct. 21. Their advocacy moved the needle and helped the FCPS team gain the necessary stamp of approval.
Shook said speaking regularly with her parents about wrestling at the dinner table helped her realize she wanted to grow her sport as much as possible during her final two high school seasons. This motivated her to take action.
She said her voice and accomplishments helped the county recognize that wrestling “wasn’t only a guys’ sport.” She added that training alongside other girls helps create a stronger sense of community, on and off the mat.
“It means a lot, because a lot of girls work off the motivation of each other,” Shook said. “And it improves girls’ mental health and [allows them] to just grow with one another in the future.”
Doyle, who’s also an assistant coach with Millbrook’s boys’ wrestling team, has coached Shook for five years, starting at Red Lion Wrestling Club and continuing at Millbrook. He also said he “helped out with her middle school a little bit.”
He said her passion for growing women’s wrestling is nothing new, and that she played a big role in FCPS wrestling reaching its current roster size in year one.
“I did not go to a middle school match that I did not see [her and her family] in the stands,” Doyle said. “She’s reached out to the younger girls who were wrestling, been mat-side for their matches, encouraging them. [The Shooks] have done an incredible job of growing the sport through a grassroots method.”
Shook added that playing softball for Millbrook also helped her recruit some of her Pioneer teammates.
This season, the FCPS team primarily rosters underclassmen, with four freshmen and two sophomores. The roster consists of five Millbrook wrestlers, two James Wood wrestlers and one Sherando wrestler. Doyle and Uhler each expressed optimism that this interest from first-year students is the start of increased long-term participation.
Sherando freshman Madison Fairchild, who wrestled while in middle school, said she’s grateful she entered high school the same year FCPS wrestling got approved.
“It’s really great to have the opportunity,” Fairchild said. “Last year, there were girls wrestling, and they had to compete with the guys and it wasn’t really as good of an experience for them. I talked to them, and they ended up not wanting to do it again. So, I’m really happy I got the opportunity to have a [girls’] team.”
In addition to Shook’s recruiting efforts, Uhler said clearing up financial misconceptions with the school board also helped get the team off the ground. Back in October, the board cited concerns about additional costs needed to fund travel, rented space and uniforms for a potential girls’ team.
Uhler said a conversation with the board made it clear that girls’ wrestlers would’ve been factored into uniforms and travel plans, regardless whether or not they had a separate team. He said the only additional expense the board had to make was coaching stipends for Doyle’s staff.
“I think that’s something that a lot of people haven’t grasped, is that girls’ wrestling has been going on for a while now in the state,” Uhler said. “It’s now just moved to where it’s creating a separate identity to male wrestling, it’s become a separate sport. Once we got to the table and got to actually work out some of the details, it was just made more clear that we were already kind of established, in a way, with girls wrestling, and it was already worked into our school budget.”
Doyle said he’s excited that Frederick County is finally building momentum in its support of girls’ wrestling. Although the sport was sanctioned last spring, other nearby counties have been more successful in both receiving roster turnout and producing highly productive wrestlers.
Last season, Orange County High School, Riverside and Broad View High Schools in Loudoun County, Fauquier High School, Oakton High School of Fairfax County and Woodbridge Senior High School of Prince William County each had one wrestler reach the state finals in their weight class. Clarke County previously rostered Kaylee Anderson, who won two state titles and had had a successful career at Marymount University, where she is now a senior.
Overall, per FloWrestling, Virginia has five girls who are ranked top 20 in their weight classes nationally, which Doyle noted is more than the boys’ four. He said his goal is for Frederick County to eventually compete with these programs and athletes.
“Ideally, we’ll get to the point where we have a full team,” Doyle said. “If you look at the Loudoun County Schools, the Fairfax County Schools, a couple of the Prince William schools, Orange County High School, these are areas and teams specifically that, at this point, already have long-standing programs.”
Long-term, Doyle said the vision for each of the Frederick County high schools is to have enough participants to field fully separate teams. However, he expressed gratitude for the initial setup, saying the VHSL has been “very amenable” as the program gets rolling.
During this first season, he’s stressed to his wrestlers that most teams are “in the same boat” as FCPS due to the sport’s recent sanctioning. He said many teams mirror theirs, rostering one or two wrestlers like Shook who carry ample experience, a few athletes like Fairchild and fellow freshman Jordan Kinsey who’ve wrestled for a few years and several others who are brand new to the sport.
Doyle said coaching wrestlers with such varied experience levels has been a fun challenge, one different from his work with younger kids at Red Lion or as an assistant with the boys’ team. He said his goal-setting coaching philosophy has helped him work with each athlete at a pace they’re prepared for.
“They genuinely want to learn, and they genuinely want to get good, which is something that, from my experience, is relatively foreign because I’m used to teaching wrestling to little kids,” Doyle said. “I’m very blessed to have a group that, while they love to have fun and love to joke around and stuff like that, I know that once we tell them [it’s] time to lock in, as soon as they hear that they’re grinding.
“I’m a very goal-oriented person. And obviously, our goals, with such a varied experience level on our team, our goals are different. For some girls, it might be, ‘hey, I didn’t get pinned today.’ Or another girl it might be, ‘hey, I pinned my way through a tournament.’ And we’ve definitely seen growth, because I think it’s easier to track growth on our less experienced wrestlers. It comes so much quicker, at least it has thus far.”
Doyle cited recent meets, such as the Tough Girls Round Robin at Stuarts Draft High School on Jan. 10, as evidence for this growth. At that meet, all six wrestlers who competed placed top two in their weight class. Additionally, four wrestlers placed at the Battle at the Bridge event on Dec. 30 at Woodridge High School, while Shook placed second at 152 and Kinsey finished third at 114 during the Mustang Girls’ Grapplers Gauntlet at Meridian High School on Saturday.
These positive results could send the FCPS wrestlers into their zone qualifier meet at Franklin County High School in Rocky Mount with positive momentum. Originally scheduled for Friday and Saturday, the tournament was delayed to Feb. 7-8.
The zone qualifiers consist of 16-person tournaments at each weight class and determine who’ll advance to the state tournament on Feb. 24-25, with the top four from each weight class moving on.
Shook in particular has her eyes set on a strong postseason performance, saying her goal is to “make the podium” at states. Though she went 1-2 in the state tournament last year, she showed her potential by pinning top-seeded Cooper Cuyler of Brentsville in the 138 bracket.
Doyle said he’s confident Shook can reach her goals and added he thinks there are other members of his team who can make noise in the postseason.
“I think there are other girls on our team, through their skill level and work ethic, that have a real chance to make a nice postseason run. It’s just about putting the pieces together,” Doyle said. “We don’t prepare to beat the girls at our experience level or less, we prepare to beat the better and the best.”
For as much faith as Doyle has in his wrestlers, Uhler has equal faith in Doyle to lead them. The CSA, who coached Doyle during his football days at Millbrook, said Doyle’s well-rounded resume at various levels of wrestling made him a strong fit for the job.
“He has connections, he has a foot in this community with his work and the outside organization [Red Lion] that he’s in, and he’s coached a lot of the girls wrestling, and he’s got the right mindset for it,” Uhler said. “He’s very good at teaching the fundamentals, good at building the sport. He’s got a great personality, and I think that people respond to him well. So it was a pretty easy choice for him to be our go-to guy for this.”
Beyond the Frederick County teams, Handley and Clarke County have also found previous success with girls’ wrestling. Although the Eagles didn’t have any girls’ wrestlers this season, and Judges only roster freshman Lizzy Arias, both schools boast former state champions in Anderson and Handley’s Beatriz Lopez, who won an unofficial state title in 2017.
Handley head coach Troy Mezzatesta said he expected to have four girls wrestle this season before multiple extenuating circumstances changed plans. He said Arias has already helped in recruiting peers for next year’s team, and said “it’s been amazing to see” girls’ wrestling grow in recent years.”
With the sport having been sanctioned for under a year, there’s plenty of room for it to develop in Frederick County and Virginia as a whole. Currently, the FCPS team only practices together three times a week, needing to practice with the boys’ teams at their individual schools on other days due to VHSL rules.
While it remains to be seen how quickly the sport will expand and reach the point where each school can field complete all-girl rosters, the leap in participation in such a short time could be a sign of things to come in Frederick County. Doyle said the support and buy-in he’s received have encouraged him for the future.
“It has definitely taken a learning curve, and we’re all kind of figuring things out together, but I have an awesome group of girls,” Doyle said. “I have two awesome assistants [Viatris Hargis and Briana Fairchild]. They’ve been awesome with figuring out how we need to do things, being patient with one another.
“I think once other girls in the area start to see it, then it’ll start to grow. Once the ball is rolling, and once we get more and more visibility for the program and girls’ wrestling as a whole in Frederick County, then the snowball effect will kick in.”
— Contact Joe Tuman at jtuman@winchesterstar.com
Follow him on X @jtuman21