Girls’ wrestling and flag football will join the Alabama High School Athletic Association as its two newest championship sports following the 2024-25 reclassification. They’ll mark the 12th and 13th girls’ sanctioned championship sports for the association.

With growing participation numbers across both sports, the Central Board of Control approved the change from emerging status to sanctioned at its annual summer meeting on Wednesday, July 26.

The AHSAA reported 89 member schools have declared the sport of girls’ flag football and 76 schools have declared girls’ wrestling for the upcoming school year.

The approval also established two classifications in each sport, Class 1A-5A and Class 6A-7A, where the first two girls’ flag football state champions will be crowned this fall on Dec. 6 as part of the AHSAA Super 7 Championships at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

“This (is) great news for our girls’ student-athletes,” AHSAA Executive Director Alvin Briggs said. “The growth we have seen in both sports has been amazing in a very short time.”

Baldwin County teams had contributed to the growth seen on the girls’ wrestling mats according to midseason statistics compiled by the Alabama Girls’ Wrestling Alliance through trackwrestling.com.

Between November and Dec. 28, 2022, AGWA found a 42% growth in active girls’ participants across the state compared to the previous year. To be considered an active participant, AGWA said the athletes must pass a hydration test run by Encore — a third-party service that runs a weight certification program — and then wrestle in at least one match entered into TrackWrestling.

In Baldwin County alone to that point, 58 athletes had taken a hydration test and 47 girls had recorded at least one match where Daphne and Gulf Shores had the highest turnout with double digits in both columns.

Also at the annual summer meeting, the board approved returning $2.25 million to its member schools under its School Athletics Grants Program, formerly known as Revenue Sharing, which marked the largest such return in the program’s history. The plan returns excess funds to member schools when the AHSAA has at least one year’s working capital in reserve.

In other action, the board also waived membership dues for all schools for the 32nd straight year to register a savings of $85,000 annually.

The Central Board of Control’s waiving of membership dues for member schools has resulted in a savings of approximately $2.6 million since the Central Board waived the dues for the first time in 1991-92.

“The $2.25 million returned to our schools is the largest ever, and it is directly attributed to the strong leadership of the Central Board and our member schools,” Briggs said. “We are also extremely proud to waive the schools’ membership fees. The board’s approval of that savings means out schools have not paid membership dues now going on four decades.”

In other business, the board approved several recommendations submitted by AHSAA coaches’ sports committees. Those recommendations will be added to the 2023-24 AHSAA Sports Book and will be available online. Among the changes are some minor adjustments to the schedules for championship play for soccer and softball.

The CBOC also reviewed and approved 2023-24 publications, including the AHSAA Handbook and AHSAA Sports Book. The Legislative Council also met and approved the AHSAA publications and heard a review of the Central Board’s action.