Finding a home – miningjournal.net

Jul 14, 2025
Northern Michigan University’s Yu Sakamoto, top, gets Grand Valley State’s Ana Malovich in a headlock as Sakamoto would get the win during a college women’s wrestling dual meet against Grand Valley State on Feb. 8 at Vandament Arena in Marquette. (Journal photo)

MARQUETTE — The women’s wrestling team at Northern Michigan University has found a home in a similar-sounding conference to the Wildcats’ usual one.
With women’s wrestling just being designated as an official sport in the NCAA in January, NMU will be offering the sport for the fifth season this upcoming school year.
For this sport, the Wildcats are joining the Great Lakes Valley Conference, which sounds quite a bit like the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. The GLVC approved Northern’s application in June.
Two fellow GLIAC members are also jumping in — Grand Valley State and neighbor Davenport — to give the inaugural season of GLVC women’s wrestling seven schools. The others are regular GLVC members McKendree, Quincy, Upper Iowa and William Jewell College.
Those schools in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri might sound familiar to Northern sports fans as the Wildcats will often see them in a number of “crossover” tournaments during seasons like volleyball and basketball, along with NCAA Division II tournaments where schools from both leagues are placed together in a Midwest regional tourneys.
Finding a home
Women’s wrestling becomes the 27th sponsored sport in the GLVC, along with the 91st championship sport in the NCAA.
Previously, the sport was classified under the NCAA’s Emerging Sports for Women program without designated championships in each of the three divisions, but now there will be D-I, D-II and D-III titles decided at the end of the season.
“The GLVC is pleased to partner with the GLIAC to promote the growth of women’s wrestling by sponsoring a regular season championship for the seven schools that sponsor the sport in both leagues,” GLVC Commissioner Jim Naumovich said in an NMU Sports Information news release about the move. “We look forward to the addition of the programs from Davenport, Grand Valley State and Northern Michigan that will all compete for the inaugural GLVC Women’s Wrestling Championship in 2026.”
NMU is starting another tradition in women’s wrestling, too, with head coach Adam Wilson taking over this fall for Tony DeAnda, who had guided the NMU program for its first four years and will now head up the Division II program at Jamestown (North Dakota).
Wilson previously coached both men’s and women’s wrestling at Division III Albion, where he led the reinstatement of the men’s program after a 40-year hiatus not as a varsity sport, along with establishment of the women’s program in 2020.
The NCAA said there were 76 women’s wrestling programs over all three of its divisions in the 2023-24 school year, including Northern’s, and in January had anticipated another 17 coming into existence during the 2024-25 season that altogether involve more than 1,200 women wrestlers.
Last year’s roster listed on the NMU athletics website, nmuwildcats.com, showed 25 Wildcats wrestlers. While none were from the Upper Peninsula, there were four from the Lower Peninsula, four from Wisconsin and others coming from areas that included Illinois, Maine, Florida and California, along with Canada and Japan.
In the GLVC, McKendree has had a women’s wrestling program the longest, dating back to 2013-14, and not only was invited to the inaugural National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships held in 2020, but won four of the eight individual championships along with the team title by 12.5 points over Simon Fraser University.
Davenport has offered the sport since the 2020-21 season, while NMU’s and William Jewell date back to 2021-22. Quincy began in 2022-23, Upper Iowa in 2023-24 and Grand Valley just last season in 2024-25.
This first year of the GLVC women’s wrestling will determine a champion by the winning percentage in conference matches.
More info can be found at GLVCsports.com and on social media at @GLVCsports and #GLVCwwres.
Story contents based on Northern Michigan University Sports Information press release reviewing the news. Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.
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