Liberty girls wrestling coach Brian Burzynski can’t nail down one success that means the most to him from this season.

With a second-place team finish at the District XI championship, a third-place team finish at regionals, and both Symarah Drey and Gracie Haflich placing seventh at states, the season has been filled with medals.

“We didn’t place lower than fifth at any tournament this season,” Burzynski says, noting that the nearly 20 girls on the team “exceeded [his] expectations throughout the season.”

The 2022–2023 season, prior to Burzynski’s involvement, was the first time girls wrestled against girls in official PIAA tournaments, although some girls on the team have been wrestling against boys in youth programs for years. Those pioneering years have affected the way girls are perceived on the mat.

“[Girls wrestling] was seen as an oddity” in the past, Burzynski notes, commenting that girls wrestling against boys was a “double-edged sword”-“If you win, you beat a girl, and if you lose, you lost to a girl.” That attitude is largely gone now, he explains: “What happened is enough girls got in when they were 5 years old, and stuck with it, and started to break ground, and it wasn’t seen as ‘you got beat by a girl’ anymore. It was like, ‘That girl’s tough.’ Through the youth levels, it has happened enough times now that people respect the female wrestler.”

Burzynski credits administrators at Liberty and other high schools with the success of the girls wrestling program this year.

“The [Liberty] administration has been wonderful,” he says. “Our athletic director [Fred Harris] has been instrumental in getting the East Penn Conference championships, the league championships for the girls together, and he’s committed to girls wrestling being a full-on program, with separate buses and separate event dates.” Burzynski remarks that few people expected the level of interest that girls wrestling has generated, so teams showed up with 20 girls instead of the predicted 10, and tournaments have 300 participants instead of the expected 100. “People flocked to it,” he marvels, “and Bethlehem has been at the forefront of it,” remarking also on the strong program at Parkland HS.

“[Freedom coach] Michelle Laubach has been a great proponent for the sport as well,” Burzynski says. “She has been adamant about pushing for girls in athletics in general.”

Forty-five states have sanctioned girls wrestling programs, and the NCAA plans to hold female wrestling championships in 2026. Division I colleges are ramping up programs, opening up opportunities for Lehigh Valley girls to play the sport they have come to love at a higher level.

“When you talk about wrestling to anyone in the country,” Burzynski says, “they know the Lehigh Valley. All college coaches know this, and that is going to carry over to the girls very quickly.”