GUILDERLAND — Chip Foster says Guilderland girls with a competitive spirit have a “once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity for success in a brand new sport.”

He is talking about wrestling, specifically Olympic-style wrestling.

Foster is the school district’s first coach for girls’ wrestling.

Although a handful of girls at Guilderland have done well practicing with the boys over the last several seasons, this year’s school budget, after lobbying from female wrestlers and their parents, included funding for the girls to have their own coach.

Practice for the girls’ team starts on Nov. 18. Foster says he has a half-dozen returning wrestlers and is hoping to recruit a team of at least 20.

“I’d like to have 20 girls that come to practice every day, learn the sport, learn to love it and compete,” he said, adding he thinks getting five girls from each of four grades is attainable.

Foster stresses that no wrestling experience is needed and cites a Colonie girl, Kristie Stenglein, near his age, who in the late 1990s was a standout. Foster was an assistant coach at Guilderland High School at the time and said, “She was throwing guys around.”

Stenglein went on to win nine medals in the Women’s World Championships, including two gold medals.

Girls’ wrestling is now the fastest-growing high school sport but New York state is not among its leaders.

“New York is really way behind the times,” said Foster. “In Texas, that bastion of progressivism, they had girls’ wrestling for 40 years. Same with Hawaii and California.”

Forty-five states have sanctioned girls’ wrestling with state championships.

The number of female wrestlers competing in high school nationwide increased fivefold between 2013 and 2023, the last year for which numbers are available, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, and the numbers almost doubled from 2022 to 2023.

Women’s wrestling debuted at the Olympics in 2004 but wasn’t added to the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Emerging Sports for Women’s program until 2020.

“This is something that’s going to grow, grow, grow, grow,” said Foster. “And that’s why I think it’s such a golden opportunity for the girls here to get on it right now at the very beginning.”

Olympic style

“One of the great things about the sport of wrestling is that it is extremely inclusive and diverse,” said Foster, adding that it accommodates “all sorts of shapes and sizes.”

“Because of the weight classes, you’re always paired with someone where you have a chance to win,” Foster said. “I’ve seen guys that look like they’re going to trip over themselves on the walk up the center of the mat but they’re dynamos. And I’ve seen guys that look like the Incredible Hulk that can’t do anything out there.”

What matters on the mat, Foster said, is mental toughness. 

One of the reasons Foster thinks Guilderland girls, even those brand new to the sport, will have a shot at success is because, starting this year statewide, girls will wrestle in the Olympic style.

Boys’ wrestling is folk style, Foster explained, which is the style the six returning girls were taught.

“Folk style is a style of wrestling that puts a lot more emphasis on control,” said Foster. “The ultimate objective of wrestling is to pin your opponent, put them on their back and hold it. But there are moves and positions where you score points because you can’t just wrestle forever.”

The Olympic or freestyle wrestling that high school girls across New York will follow this year involves “much more technique” to score points, said Foster. “It’s more free-flowing.”

This will require new referees and officials to follow the new rules and it means “there’s not going to be a lot of interaction between the boys and the girls,” Foster said.

He also said, “It might be easier to learn and the object, coming from the top, is that girls in college are going to be wrestling freestyle and, if they want to continue on at the world level,” it’s all freestyle.

Foster himself has wrestled in both folk and freestyle.

He grew up in Guilderland and started wrestling when he was 8 years old. His father, a physical education teacher, was a wrestling coach.

He loved the sport from that very young age.

“There’s a very simple competitive nature about it,” said Foster. “It’s mano a mano, just one wrestler against the other … And in the long term it’s great for your health. You learn how to get in shape and how to keep in shape and you use all the muscles in your body.”

While there is intense bonding with team members who help one another at practices and in the weight room, Foster said, “As an individual, you really feel the competition and the work ethic.”

Foster did well wrestling at Guilderland High School and went on to wrestle at Cornell University, a Division I school.

“That was very intense and focused but it was a really great experience,” he said of wrestling for Cornell. “I learned a lot about wrestling that I never knew, like a whole extra level.”

He was first team All-Ivy and, in his sophomore and junior year, Cornell’s wrestlers were the Eastern champions.

After he graduated from Cornell, Foster volunteered as an assistant coach at Guilderland for three years, when his brother was on the team. His brother is now a wrestling coach in Montanna.

Foster then became the head wrestling coach at SUNY Cobleskill for two years. 

“Then I went on with my life,” said Foster who worked as a commercial fisherman and worked in the Merchant Marine, “but I was always a wrestling fan. I would go back to nationals to watch Cornell wrestle all the time.”

Foster, now 52, has stayed close to his Cornell teammates, one of whom supplied the picture running with this story.

Foster moved back to Guilderland to be near his parents as he and his wife, Kate Bonzon, an administrator for an not-for-profit environmental organization, raise their children: 5-year-old twins, Theodore, known as Bear, and Christopher, known as Otter, and 7-year-old Charles, known as Finn.

Otter, Bear, and Finn are already excited about youth wrestling, he said.

Guilderland has a program at the elementary level organized by J.P. Hulslander and Don Favro. They are the head coaches for the boys’ team at the high school.

The elementary program is open to both boys and girls where together they can learn the basics of wrestling.

Girls only

It’s at the high school level where the girls will be taught Olympic or freestyle wrestling.

Foster did freestyle wrestling in summer programs.

When Foster was an assistant coach at Guilderland last year, he said, “I noticed because there’s like 50 boys and there were like eight girls; it’s really easy for the girls to fall through the cracks. So I started to pay a little bit more attention to them.”

Foster said of the upcoming season, “We’re going to have practices with just girls, to have an environment where everyone can feel comfortable to learn the sport. Bottom line: This is a sport like any other where you test moves and it’s a competition and now you go out there and do your best.”

The team will have its own practice space in the gym at Altamont Elementary School.

“We’ll just roll out mats at the gym,” said Foster.

On days when the boys’ team is not using the wrestling room at the high school — for instance, when the boys are away for a competition — the girls will use that room, which is padded on the walls as well as the floor “because people can hit the wall,” said Foster.

The girls will also have designated times to use the weight room at the high school.

Foster plans to start with the basics.

“It might be boring some days when we’re just talking about real basic, simple stuff,” he said. “But we need to get a sound wrestling foundation underneath us and then we can go forward.”

He may show films during parts of the first practices to “give an idea of what the sport looks like.”

Foster said of potential recruits, “They shouldn’t hesitate because they don’t know anything about it.”

He also said, even after practices have started, girls are still welcome to join the team. “The door is always open,” he said.

Noting that the neighboring districts of Voorheesville and Berne-Knox-Westerlo don’t have girls’ wrestling teams, Foster said, “If there’s a girl in either one of those schools that wants to wrestle, they can wrestle with us … They can practice with us and we’ll find a home for them.”

Foster concluded, “I just really want to get the word out that this is a special, unique opportunity and I don’t want anyone to not take the chance because they just don’t know enough about it.

“And, you know, these kinds of opportunities don’t come back.”