Colorado Mesa women's wrestling team eager to have official NCAA Championships

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Travis Mercado didn't have to tell his Colorado Mesa women's wrestling team the big news.

The Mavs' phones were blowing up with the announcement that their sport — finally — will become an NCAA championship sport in the 2025-26 season.

"It was everywhere," redshirt sophomore Hailey Chapman said. "Instagram, Facebook, it was just a big deal. It was exciting to see everyone liking the posts and reposting."

The NCAA quickly posted a graphic on its X (formerly Twitter) account when Division II representatives at the national convention overwhelmingly approved championship status. It came on the heels of the Division I stamp of approval, and Division III also voted for championship status. It culminated years of lobbying by coaches, administrators and wrestling groups, including USA Wrestling, Wrestle Like A Girl and the National Wrestling Coaches Association.

Mercado, who started CMU's women's program in 2018 with 10 athletes, was center stage in the lobbying as part of the sport's leadership committee.

"I was trying to go back through old messages and emails and different press releases, and it was in 2016 when all these (Division I) schools, I remember Arizona State, Iowa and their athletic directors were like, we're in support of adding women's wrestling as an emerging sport," Mercado said. "We're not adding, but we're in support of women's wrestling as an emerging sport. So just a little under nine years ago we were trying to figure things out and make this rapid push.

"A sense of accomplishment for sure. Seeing D-I announce on Wednesday it was kind of like, well, D-II and D-III are going to follow suit. There was no maybe about it."

Women's wrestling had been classified as an "emerging sport" in 2020, the first step in reaching championship status. To become a championship sport, 40 schools had to sponsor a team at the varsity level as well meet other requirements. In the 2023-24 season, 76 NCAA institutions, across all three divisions, had varsity women's wrestling programs, with 17 more announcing their intention to add the sport this season.

After the national tournament March 7-8 at Xtream Arena in Coralville, Iowa, the National Collegiate Women's Wrestling Championships will give way to the NCAA Championships. In the meantime, the newly formed NCAA women's wrestling championship committee, of which CMU Associate Athletic Director Oscar Ramirez is a member, will start hashing out the details for the inaugural NCAA event.

Mercado will stay involved in the planning as he guides the ninth-ranked Mavericks to the national championships.

"Kind of like a sense of relief, like it's done," he said. "We don't have to go through arguments, go through the chain of command, right? We don't have to campaign anymore. Now the campaigning is different; it's going to be, 'What do we want it to look like?' "

Currently, all three NCAA divisions wrestle as one. Whether that changes next year remains to be seen, as well as qualifying procedures. Mercado is hoping now that the NCAA has embraced the sport, more schools, including those in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, get on board and add a women's team, especially those that already have a men's program. As more teams add programs, the more likely it is each division will eventually have its own championship.

When the University of Iowa added a women's varsity program in 2022-23, it brought a lot of notoriety to the sport, but Mercado credited four schools — Simon Fraser, King, University of Pacific and Lindenwood — as "the true pioneers of NCAA women's wrestling."

Colorado Mesa wasn't far behind, as the first college women's program in Colorado. The Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference sanctioned the sport last season, with the requisite five programs. Simon Fraser and Texas Woman's are affiliate members along with CMU, Adams State and Chadron State. The RMAC was the first Division II conference to sponsor women's wrestling as a championship sport and will have its second conference tournament Feb. 1 at Colorado College. Air Force Academy was slated to host the event, but new security procedures to access the base prompted the venue switch.

The CMU athletes can't wait to be on a par with all the other NCAA programs in the athletic department, but they don't anticipate the competition to change. But the lure of being called an NCAA national champion? Yeah, they can't wait for that.

"I feel like it's always been the same to all of us, being a national champion before this," freshman Sophia Cornish said. "But now you get to say to people, 'I'm an NCAA national champion.' I mean, the caliber is going to be the same, but just the name and telling people 'I'm an NCAA All-American,' I think that's a big difference."

"Growing up, I used to watch the men's championship and that's what I based my goals off of," said Chapman, an NCWWC All-American as a freshman in 2023-23, placing sixth at the national tournament. She missed most of last season with an injury and is working her way back from that, with two more years to compete after this season. "And now younger girls can base their goals off these NCAA women athletes, so I think it's really cool, and it's a really big step in women's growth in wrestling."

Both Chapman and Cornish are legacy wrestlers, with a chance to compete for an NCAA title like others in their families.

Cornish's father wrestled in the NCAA Tournament for Fresno State, and Chapman's uncle was an NCAA qualifier at Stanford. Both attained All-America status. Chapman's maternal grandfather was a Division II national champion, so her wrestling roots run deep. Her younger sister plans to wrestle in college in a couple of years, so she won't know anything but NCAA status.

"My dad was calling me as soon as it happened," Cornish said. "He was so excited."

Chapman said her uncle attends the men's NCAA Championships every year.

"He calls me about it so hopefully soon, he'll fly to one of ours," she said.

The NCWWC stepped in to offer a women's championship in 2019-20, and just like the sport itself, it's grown every year. As much as competing for NCAA titles, Mercado is excited for the experience for his athletes, especially in the first year. The NCAA has allocated $1.7 million in funding for the championships.

"You go back to the first NCAA-only national championship (NAIA schools broke off with their own championship) in 2019-20 and we were at Adrian College in a gym, open tournament-esque. And then you have Hailey's freshman year, when we were in the arena in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and it felt like a national championship, the graphics on the banners and everything. They were whatever that NCAA blue color is, right? The font looked pretty (similar), but it says National Collegiate Women's Wrestling Championship," Mercado said.

"To see that growth and going into next year, hopefully being at a national tournament where all the mats have the NCAA logo in the center. You walk in and here's your goodie bag from the NCAA, the coin, all those things. Here, try on these jackets, what jacket are you going to order, because you're a national qualifier. I'm excited to get to do that because the past 10 years have been a lot of wishful thinking and a lot of hard work."

NCAA swag, the Name, Image and Likeness opportunities, the prospect of televised national championships and having the NCAA branding are all appealing, but the younger Mavericks only wish NCAA status would have come in time for this year's seniors, and those before them.

"I'm very grateful for every female athlete that's come before me, in a big way," Chapman said. "I think we're going to wrestle the same hard, grind-it-out and make a legacy for this team and this school."

"What the other girls have done before us is so amazing," Cornish said, "I'm super grateful."