Super 32 Sold Out!!: A Generation Lining Up to Face the Best

The big-stage era

Super 32 is part of a broader shift. FloWrestling's Who's Number One comes to Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater this Saturday with 24 head-to-head matches between top-ranked high schoolers, 11 of them girls' freestyle bouts. Texas sends two of its best: (Updated 9/24 with results) Hailey Delgado, WNO #1 at 120 and a three-time Team USA member, and Landri VonGonten, fresh off U17 World silver in Baku and her own WHO win. Both will be in Greensboro four weeks later.

Win or learn

A packed arena teaches what a local tournament can't. You either get your hand raised in front of college coaches, national-team staff and a streaming audience, or you lift your chin and walk off to fight another day.

It's scary, and it's hard. Some families plan an athlete's schedule to protect a record or build up PIN ratings, choosing only brackets they expect to win. Others go looking for the toughest room they can find, where an athlete can show what she has learned and find out what she still needs to learn. A loss in that room isn't a setback; it tells her what to work on next.

The same goes for age groups. Wrestlers are growing into healthy weights and moving up to older, harder competition: 16U to Juniors at Fargo, U17 to U20, then U23 and Senior. Keeping up with the Girls

The strongest demand is on the girls' side. NFHS reports 88,771 high school girls wrestled in 2025-26, up 19.9% in one season, at 8,853 schools. Forty states now crown girls' champions.

Super 32 field almost matched the incredible growth in womens wrestling but they oversold on the boys numbers and grew them by 20.7% while NFHS actually saw a - 1.7% shrinkage in boys participation.

Women at Super 32 are capped at 480 entries and high school (boys) at 1,900. That's about 25 girls for every 100 boys; nationally it's grown to 30 girls for every 100 boys.

The girls are certainly jumping into the deep end fast. Super 32's middle school division is mixed boys and girls, with no girls-only bracket. 31 middle school girls moved up to the women's high school bracket to face the bigger room. This is approximately 10 times the rate of middle school boys who choose to compete in the boys’ high school division (6.4% of the women's field vs. 0.6% of the boys').

Biggest Stage: the Sheppard twins

Ella and Emma Sheppard could have stayed in the women's bracket of 480 entries. Instead, the Conway (S.C.) seniors are among the few girls in the 1,897-wrestler High School (folkstyle) bracket, Ella at 106 and Emma at 113. Super 32 allows one division per wrestler, so they gave up the women's freestyle bracket to face the folkstyle competition. These athletes clearly have an amazing Bounce Back Quotient (O2's measure of resilience) by choosing the bigger room.

The right bet on freestyle

Super 32 deserves credit for running its women's division in freestyle, the only Olympic mat style open to women and, of course, the 91st NCAA championship sport!

Let's see how the numbers play out

Wisconsin, Iowa and Texas sent mostly pre-qualified, nationally ranked wrestlers. Florida and North Carolina sent large groups through open registration. Will the elite teams dominate the podium, or will the Southeast's bracket stuffing turn into medals? Either way it's great for all these athletes to be in this room.

Where is the O2 in the room?

Great to see parents, coaches and athletes searching for the BIGGEST AND BEST room they can compete in! Some will WIN and some will LEARN, but everyone will be better for Super32! We hope the college scouts look at the bigger picture and not just who is on the podium. It will bring oxygen to the sport if they look for who is resilient, who is taking risks, who is coachable? Who has a thirst to win more and with time and energy has proven they will deliver? That is where the O2 really enters the room, the sport and the world. Let’s GOOOOOO.