The passage of Title IX in the early 1970s opened up numerous opportunities for female athletes to participate in sports previously dominated by their male counterparts.

More than 40 years later, McPherson's Doug and Mya Kretzer realized there were still opportunities unfulfilled. Together they helped lead an effort to give high school girls in Kansas a chance to make wrestling a sport of their own.

By their own account, it was not an easy endeavor. The challenge took nearly six years to reach fruition. Approval by the Kansas State High School Activities Association took place mere months after Mya, a 2019 McPherson High graduate, had completed her high school eligibility with the Bullpups.

Their story may have played out quite differently if Mya had been a little less stubborn and followed the path her father, the head coach of McPherson High wrestling, had planned for her.

Doug Kretzer, a 1992 McPherson graduate himself, had spent 15 seasons as an assistant coach with the Bullpups working alongside Rich Settle, before taking over as head coach in the 2011-12 season. When his youngest children, twins Mya and E.J., were starting middle school, his hope was that his only daughter would play another role in the sport.

"Bottom line, I didn't want my daughter to wrestle," coach Kretzer said. "I always dreamed that I would coach my three sons and that would be a tremendous experience with my boys. At the same time I always dreamt that my daughter would be matside as a manager and she would be right there with me.

"We had girls who had wrestled at McPherson in the past, including Chandra Engel and Addie Lanning. I had seen these two quality female wrestlers years before. I saw how, when they wrestled someone from a different town, they got roughed up pretty good. There was a feel to the match that the boys needed to send a message that they didn't belong in their sport.

"Mya will tell you that I didn't want her to wrestle because I didn't think she could do it. But how do you tell your daughter that you don't want her to wrestle because you don't want to see what happened to some other girl, happen to her. I didn't want to have that conversation with her. I love her.

"She took that like I thought she didn't belong there and that wasn't the case."

Mya had her own plans and made them clear two years before she would wrestle for her father. When coach Kretzer took a sign-up sheet to the middle school to gauge the interest among junior high athletes, his daughter's name was the first on the list. And not as a potential manager.

"I have three brothers and my dad is the high school wrestling coach," Mya said. "I told him I was going to come out for wrestling and he said I wasn't.  He kind of expected me to be a manager at the time.

"I think once I ended up going out and wrestling, it was my own decision at that point, But I think he saw that I was pretty decent at it and that I put a lot of time and effort into getting the moves when I first started. I was able to show him that a lot of girls could do this."

"I knew right then that there was no telling her no," coach Kretzer said. "I said ok, you're on the team. Go ahead and do it. These other girls had shown that it could be done and it was important enough to her to do it, so all the other concerns just went right out the window."

It was about this time that Kretzer began his effort to add girls wrestling as a sanctioned sport in the state of Kansas. And that effort began with a fairly simple conversation one afternoon when McPherson activities director Shane Backhus stopped by the wrestling room to watch practice.

"So Shane and I were talking in my first or second year as a head coach," Kretzer said. "My daughter was starting to wrestle then and that sparked me a little bit to dream that maybe she could wrestle against other girls some day as a high school student.

"I said to him that we should try to do this and see if the state would acknowledge that this made sense. He liked the idea because there weren't really any changes that needed to be made. We had the mats, the equipment and the coaching staff.
"There were probably two embers that created the dream. One was that my daughter would not take no for an answer on wrestling. The other was my A.D. basically led me to believe it could happen. If he had told me no, the dream might have just died right there.

"The question was, could we find other people that agree and find other girls to wrestle."

They learned fairly quickly that the answer was yes.

Hoping to earn the backing of the Kansas Wrestling Coaches Association, Kretzer made a presentation at the organization's fall clinic in 2016. Not only did he get their support, but he was asked to serve as the first girls representative on the KWCA board of directors.

During the 2016-17 school year, McPherson had the state's first girls wrestling team, though the sport still had not been sanctioned by KSHSAA. In December of 2016, McPherson held the first tournament specifically for girls. The following month, similar tournaments were held in Burlington and Fredonia.

"About that time McPherson decided to have an unofficial state tournament," coach Kretzer said. "The state wouldn't let us call it a state tournament. We had to call it the Kansas Girls Wrestling Championship."

That first Kansas Girls Wrestling Championship in 2017 at McPherson High School had 56 girls representing 36 schools, and it was the first of three unofficial state tournaments held before the sport was sanctioned by KSHSAA prior to the 2019-20 season.

"I thought that was a big thing," Mya said. "What was really special about (the first Kansas Girls Wrestling Championship tourney) was it was very moving. The energy was totally different than any other tournament I had been at, because it had purpose and meaning behind it. We were all very passionate and grateful to be there.

"That tournament and the next two years were heartwarming, to see all those girls and how happy they were to be there. And for me it was very heartwarming to see how much people appreciated my dad and his efforts for getting girls wrestling sanctioned.

"I just thought 'That's such a good man, to be able to give girls the opportunity to wrestle against one another.' All the sacrifices I had to make to wrestle against boys was really hard. Almost too hard and I didn't need to go through that."

Mya Kretzer won individual titles at each of the three end-of-the-year Kansas Girls Wrestling Championships, and was voted the Outstanding Wrestler of the Tournament her final two years. She never lost a match to a female opponent at the high school level, finishing 33-0 with 28 pins. She also had 42 wins in 90 matches against male opponents during her high school career.

Although progress was being made, there was still work to be done to get the sport sanctioned by KSHSAA.

"They held unofficial girls state tournaments at McPherson High School and that spearheaded it for us," said KSHSAA assistant executive director Mark Lentz. "Doug obviously took charge of that along with (Backhus).

"That gave us some baseline data that we were able to take to our board to show there was an interest in girls wrestling."

"We could feel the push," coach Kretzer said. "We were starting to get traction with the KWCA and with other schools around the state. KSHSAA would hear us out, but we had to prove to them that it was a worthy endeavor.

"The KWCA was a big part of this too. I was just a coach and a dad trying to get this done. Once I had the backing of the KWCA, I had other coaches that agreed and could see that it made sense. Then we didn't have just one coach's brain thinking how to do this, we had a dozen."

In 2018 a plan to add girls wrestling as a sanctioned sport got the approval of the Kansas Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, but the plan could not get approval from KSHSAA's board of directors before the start of the 2018-19 season, Mya's last at the high school level. Doug Kretzer always knew that was a possibility, but it didn't make it any easier to take.

"It broke my heart, to be honest with you," coach Kretzer said. "This was me, as a coach and a dad, not as a girls rep. This is how I felt as a father.

"Mya wasn't going to get to wrestle. She was the face of all of this work and it wasn't going to come to fruition.

"In the spring of 2019 they voted to approve what we submitted and then it became official, which was great. We were both just really happy. It was a dream come true. It was totally worth it. It would be selfish to say that she missed out, but we still moved a mountain to get it done."

"Mya actually came with Doug, and I had them speak at the board meeting on the night it was passed," Lentz said. "Mya talked about why girls wrestling needed to pass and why it was difficult for girls to compete against boys.

"Mya's passion for it really set the tone. She didn't get a chance to wrestle in our sanctioned state tournament, but other girls got the opportunity because of girls like her."

Participation numbers in Kansas have climbed at an impressive pace, up 66 percent in the last two years to nearly 1,500 individuals competing in girls wrestling in the 2021-2022 season. There will be 178 schools represented at girls wrestling regionals later this month.

"We've probably increased 100 schools from where we started," Lentz said. "Those schools understand the value of it and what it took was the coaches buying into it.

"They had to go out and recruit their girls. Once those girls realized they didn't have to practice with boys, that did it."

Although she never had the chance to wrestle in a Kansas State Championship officially sanctioned by KSHSAA, Mya admitted that this effort was never about her and her opportunities.

"I think the concept of girls wrestling guys and the history behind it, it wasn't a good fit honestly," Mya said. "Girls could have been bullied off of teams back in the day and there were coaches who would tell the boys to work the girls so much that they would end up quitting. I don't think my dad wanted to deal with those types of things for his own daughter.

"But we also wanted that to be different for other girls. That's how we are and especially how he is. He has always used wrestling as an outlet to mold people into their best selves. Giving girls the opportunity to wrestle other girls instead of guys … I mean girls won't come out if they are wrestling other guys, but if they are wrestling girls, then they'll come out. Then they can take advantage of all the things that wrestling has to offer."

"As the girls rep for KWCA and someone who has coached high school wrestling for 26 years, it's never about one kid," Doug Kretzer said. "It's always about the sport and what's the right thing to do."

We are grateful to partner with WIN for KC, an organization with the mission to empower the lives of girls and women by advocating and promoting the lifetime value of sports through opportunities for participation and leadership development. WIN for KC and the KSHSAA believe involvement in activities and sports lay the ground work for supporting well-rounded citizens in our communities and beyond. For more on WIN for KC visit: https://www.sportkc.org/win-for-kc