Warren Mott girls wrestlers are growing with the sport

WARREN — The Warren Mott High School girls wrestling team is a perfect microcosm of the girls wrestling landscape in Michigan and the country.

The program has seen incredible growth to its high school and youth program over the past four years and it’s noticeable at competitions and tournaments.

“Every year the competition gets tougher,” Warren Mott coach Jeff Pruitt said. “We’ve doubled in size every year since I started coaching girls.”

Warren Mott specifically has become a place to find top-end girls wrestling talent. The team had the state champion at 125 pounds in 2022 via Hannah Palise, and currently has two girls with their eyes on the same prize in seniors Makayla Perdue-Daniels and Megan Melnyk.

“We travel to find better competition and find people ranked above our girls. Both (Perdue-Daniels and Melnyk) are ranked,” Pruitt said. “Megan is ranked No. 5 and ‘Mak’... is ranked No. 4 because she knocked off somebody above her this weekend.”

At press time, Perdue-Daniels was 22-3 on the season and Melnyk was 21-2. Both have high aspirations for the season and both have established themselves as some of the best wrestlers in the state.

“I mean, I want to win states,” Melnyk said.

And states is on the table for both Warren Mott seniors as they begin preparing for a district tournament that didn’t exist just a year ago.

“Seeing these girls coming out for wrestling is just insane,” Perdue-Daniels said. “My goal is to just take it one match at a time.”

Both girls have seen a ton of growth within the sport just over their high school careers. Even the formatting of the tournaments and the postseason has changed due to increased participation.

“When I first started there were only three of us on the team,” Melnyk said. “I think it’s really cool that there’s a districts (tournament) this year. When we started there were barely eight people in a bracket at regionals… Now you have to go to districts, place at districts, and place at regionals to go to states.”

Girls wrestling went from four regionals with over 25 girls in each bracket, to needing eight district tournaments this year to feed into regionals because of the growth. It’s not just in Michigan, either. Girls wrestling is one of the fastest growing sports at the collegiate level, too, according to Pruitt.

“The state is putting in the work, too. It’s a full-blown recognized sport,” Pruitt said. “At the NCAA level it’s exploding as well… D1 wrestling for girls is now a recognized sport… That helps add to us being able to pitch it to kids. That it is a college level sport for girls.”

The next step for Warren Mott girls wrestling? Have enough girls to field a full team. Currently, the program falls just barely short of a full roster with representation in each weight class, but with more and more girls joining the youth program, that day is almost here.

“That’s my goal, actually. I would really like to get a full squad,” Pruitt said. “It’s getting there. We’re closer now than we’ve ever been… To grow it to that level, to where we’re competing as a team and individuals just like the boys team’s do… I want a full squad of girls with 15 or 16 girls on a team.”

The program is taking the right steps to accomplish that goal. There’s a large increase in youth participation and now the team travels to local middle schools to talk about how fun it is to be a part of a growing sport.

“When we go and recruit for middle schoolers and we tell them that we’re wrestling, they look at us with a surprised face,” Perdue-Daniels said. “And telling adults, ‘Hey, yeah, I wrestle,’ I feel like it’s a flex to say.”

Girls wrestling is taking off and Warren Mott is right in the middle of that growth. It’s been a challenging yet rewarding journey for Pruitt and company but there’s more still to come.

At the end of the day, the girls are what have made this sport amazing.

“When you get somebody that doesn’t know what they’re doing coming in the door and you coach them up, then next thing you know they start winning matches,” Pruitt said. “That’s the fun of it.”

The individual regional tournament for girls was set for Feb. 16th, after press time, and the individual state finals are scheduled to be held Feb. 28 to March 1st at Ford Field in Detroit.