Wrestling Returns to the Ville

After not offering our own wrestling team for over 20 years, the Janesville School Board approved the return of the program at their monthly meeting on Monday, January 8, 2024. The program revival is set for the 2024-2025 school year.

Janesville has been in a shared program with Waverly- Shell Rock High school since the program ended in 2002. After a successful start to a youth wrestling program at JCSD, many dreamed of a bigger vision….the revival of a Janesville wrestling team.

In an interview with the Waverly Newspaper, Janesville Athletic Director, Micah Monroe states, “There’s been a lot of community support from the parents. We started the Cats Wrestling Club to secure a mat for the school and they’ve done their training here at the school and that’s really picked up the excitement about wrestling and getting it back. There’s been quite a few people coming to practices and participating in tournaments and they’ve had about 60 kids that have been coming to practice. We’ve been talking for a while trying to figure out if it was the right time to get wrestling back in Janesville and with the amount of support from the community members and in the school, we felt that it was the right time. Our school board is all with it and they decided that it was time to get that process going.”

With the popularity of girls wrestling in Iowa, the Wildcats will follow suit and they will offer a girls team as well.

“The talks started a couple of years ago,” Monroe said. “Last year we had seven junior varsity girls wrestle for Waverly and we’ve had a number of students express interest that if we had our own program, they play basketball and other sports for Janesville and they would like that as an option too. With girls programs starting, there are a lot of girls that are interested in wrestling.”

Although there is a possibility that offering a wrestling team might pull players from the basketball teams, the main focus for Janesville administration is being able to offer as many opportunities for students to succeed.

“That’s always a concern,” Monroe said. “I think the main thing though is that we want to provide our students with everything possible. With the popularity of wrestling in the area and the girls being sanctioned now, we just felt that it was a good time and the amount of support from the community, we thought it was a good time to get it started and provide another great program for our students to be a part of.”