John's Journal: Girls Wrestling With A Hometown Twist

I was watching female wrestlers compete inside the spacious gymnasium at St. James High School on a recent Saturday. This was the initial Belle of the Border tournament, with 16 teams from Minnesota and nine from Iowa, thus the “border” reference. This was like every wrestling tournament I’ve ever attended: athletes working hard … coaches advising, celebrating and consoling … fans cheering … officials ensuring safety and enforcing the rules. The only difference was that the wrestlers were girls.

The growth of girls wrestling in Minnesota, as well as Iowa, has been an absolute boom. More than 1,500 Minnesota girls in grades 7 through 12 are on wrestling teams this season. That number has almost doubled from a year ago, and there were about 250 the first year girls wrestling was sanctioned by the MSHSL in 2021-22. Iowa, a state that’s really wild about wrestling, has also seen tremendous growth in the number of girls competing.

When I heard about the Belle of the Border a few weeks earlier, something caught my eye. The Iowa teams competing included the Titans of GTRAELC. Those initials are shorthand for what was six separate schools when I was growing up in Iowa in the 1960s and 1970s. They are Graettinger, Terril, Ruthven, Ayrshire, Estherville and Lincoln Central. These days, there are three school districts in that group: Graettinger-Terril, Ruthven-Ayrshire and Estherville Lincoln Central.

As is the case around Minnesota, school consolidations and cooperative agreements are part of life for small towns. I graduated from Graettinger in 1977, and teams from Terril and Ruthven were among our biggest rivals in the Cornbelt Conference. We were the Graettinger Pirates in those days. Among the changes since then are that Graettinger and Terril now are one school, as are Ruthven and Ayrshire, and those two schools (from four little towns) form coop sports teams in order to have enough athletes. Girls from Estherville Lincoln Central adds another layer to the alphabet soup wrestling team.

I walked into the St. James gym shortly after the tournament began. The first thing I saw was a group of cheerleaders who had the word “Titans” on the front of their uniforms. They were from GTRA … the hometown, or at least one-fourth hometown. (The Titans of Minnesota’s Tri-City United also competed, leading to occasional moments of confusion for me).

I had called Graettinger-Terril activities director Todd Hough a few days before the Belle. I don’t know Todd, but I sure know his family. His dad, Rod Hough, was my high school football coach. Rod took over as head coach in my junior year; we were coming off a couple of so-so seasons and by my senior year we were playing in the Class A state championship game (no other details warranted).

Todd, who also teaches and is the current head football coach, was born in 1977, the year I graduated. The GTRA Titans play Class A football, although not long ago their enrollment had them competing in eight-player football. Home football games are played at a very nice facility in Ruthven, leaving Rod Hough Field in Graettinger quiet on game nights.

That stillness contrasts with the mania that came to my hometown when the first boys wrestling team arrived during the 1970-71 season. I was in sixth grade and I still vividly remember the excitement around school for hometown dual meets.

The undisputed star of that team from 50-some years ago was a heavyweight muscle-bound farm boy named Gary Boecker. His last name was pronounced “Baker” and his nickname was Junior. I don’t know how he got the nickname, but I wonder if it didn’t come from a resemblance to a celebrity named Junior Samples, star of the famous TV show Hee Haw. Either way, Junior Baker was a butt-kicker on the wrestling mat and the closer, wrestling the final match of those duals in our little gym and usually pinning his opponent in a matter of seconds.

I have a memory in my head to this day; the night’s wrestling has concluded, people are chattering while streaming out of the gym and a high school girl loudly says this to a friend: “I just LOVE watching Junior wrestle!”

(Now a note about my own brief wrestling career … I played basketball through 10^th grade and then did everyone a favor and gave up hoops. The next winter, some of my buddies on the wrestling team convinced me to work out with them in “the room.” It would be a way to stay in shape for other sports and have some fun, they said. I ventured into the wrestling room one time, lasted for almost half of the practice and realized that I did not have the stuff to be a wrestler. I think my parting words were something like, “You guys are too tough for me, and you’re also nuts. I’m gonna go lift weights.”)

Fast-forwarding back to 2025, Todd Hough told me that without the coop agreement, Graettinger-Terril would have only a handful of girls out for wrestling. The GTRAELC team includes 13 female wrestlers, with nine of them competing in St. James.

I was especially interested in two of the Titans, juniors Trista Guinn and Isabelle Harris. Their last names were very familiar, because I grew up with their grandfathers, fellow 1977 graduates. Rusty Harris, one of the nicest people I’ve ever known, died way too early, at age 50 in 2009. Matt Guinn, thankfully, is still with us and he was the first person I mentioned when I talked with his granddaughter.

Trista is one of the best wrestlers in Iowa, placing seventh at the girls state tournament last year. Iowa holds its girls state wrestling tournament separate from the boys, at Xtream Arena in Coralville (near Iowa City). So many girls are wrestling in Iowa that this season is the first with two classes for the postseason.

As Trista and I stepped away from the din of the gym and chatted in the school lobby, I told her that her grandpa (who was not able to attend the tournament) was the toughest wrestler I have ever seen. I showed her a photo of him as a high school senior, which I had found in our yearbook a day earlier. In 1977 he was a year older than she is now.

As Trista talked, the determination I saw in her reminded me of her tough-as-nails grandpa. She also is a volleyball and track athlete, but wrestling is special to her.

“It's a lot more intense,” she said, “and it's a lot more not necessarily team-focused but more self-focused on what you can do, what you need to get better at and what you're good at.”

She first wrestled when she was six or seven years old, she said.

“I saw my brother doing it, and then I decided I just wanted to try it. I took a year off in fifth grade because I just didn't think it was for me. And then I ended up going back out the next year because I missed it.”

The granddaughters of my classmates did well at the Belle of the Border. Trista Guinn placed fourth at 112 pounds and Isabelle Harris (who also went to state last year) finished sixth at 136. GTRAELC’s Terra Swedin was the runner-up at 106. The Titans finished ninth among the 25 teams behind six from Iowa (including the top five) and Forest Lake and Owatonna from Minnesota. Graettinger is about an hour’s drive south of St. James, so it was easy to accept the tournament invitation.

As familiar as I was with Titans grandfathers, I did not know the young members of the coaching. Head coach Max Bergo, 26, teaches industrial technology at Graettinger-Terril and lives in Estherville. One of the assistants is Skyler Bonestroo, who teaches middle school social science at G-T.

Max was an Iowa high school wrestler in Lake Mills, attended the University of Northern Iowa and was hired at Graettinger-Terril out of college. He coached junior high football for one year before the girls coaching position opened up.

“They asked me if I would do it,” he said, wearing a Carhart quarter zip with a logo that read “GTRA-ELC Girls Wrestling” over his heart. “I was kind of hesitant at first with girls wrestling, but after we started it just took off, and I kind of fell in love with it.

“When I started, I was kind of unsure if there’d be a lot of drama or stuff like that, but I’ll tell you what, I would much rather coach the girls over the boys. They just have such good hearts, and they're good sports about it, and they try their best. It's a completely different atmosphere.”

The GTRAELC girls practice separately from the GTRA boys team. The boys use the wrestling room in Graettinger and the girls roll out mats in the cafeteria. They are hoping to get a more dedicated practice space in the future.

One coach who was more familiar greeted me as I was chatting with Skyler. Doug Hoffman is a former wrestler who has been involved with the team since graduating from Graettinger in 1981. He has been the boys head coach and now is an assistant for the boys and girls teams.

He told me that the girls team included four wrestlers when the sport began three years ago.

“It’s a blast to coach. It’s so easy to coach,” Doug said. “The boys lose and it’s the end of the world. The girls come off the mat and say, ‘I’ll beat ‘em next time.’ ”

Another member of the girls coaching staff is Doug’s stepdaughter, Kelsey Dietrich. Max, Skyler, Doug and Kelsey watched from a corner of one of the four mats as the Titans competed.

During the competition, Doug and I were chatting when I noticed a young lady wearing a sweatshirt that had “Iowa Lakes Women’s Wrestling” across the front. Iowa Lakes Community College has campuses in Estherville and Emmetsburg, with my hometown smack between the two.

I asked the woman in the sweatshirt if she was a coach; it made sense that a college coach might be doing a little recruiting at the Belle of the Border. She was not a coach; Lexi Timmerman is a first-year Iowa Lakes wrestler from St. Peter, Minnesota, who was helping coach the girls from her hometown.

The Belle was a celebration of one of the fastest-growing sports in the country. As of this season, girls wrestling is sanctioned in 46 states. In 2017, that number was six.

In Minnesota and Iowa, especially, the growth of girls wrestling has been something to behold on both sides of the border.

“It's just growing substantially every single year,” Bergo said. “I think it's going to be as big as the boys.”

Over the holidays, Max and his wife Molly welcomed their first child, a young man named Mason. There is good news, Mason: Boys can wrestle, too.

--MSHSL staff member John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Bluesky at johnmilleamn and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts. Contact John at [email protected] or [email protected]