USA Wrestling Teal Certification Study Guide:

Coaching Girls & Women in Wrestling

Girls’ wrestling is exploding, and that is a very good problem for our sport to have.

More girls are walking into wrestling rooms, competing, traveling, making friends, winning matches, losing heartbreaking ones, and discovering that they are capable of doing hard things. That growth also means coaches have to grow with the sport.

That is really what the USA Wrestling Teal Coaching Course is about. (For Bronze level help click here.)

Yes, there are questions to remember for the certification. Yes, there are a few numbers and terms worth studying. But underneath all of that is a much bigger message: if we want girls to stay in wrestling, we have to build wrestling rooms where they feel safe, respected, challenged, understood, and genuinely excited to come back tomorrow.

And if you are a woman coaching wrestling, some of this may feel obvious because you have probably experienced parts of it yourself. Other pieces may make you rethink little details in your room that you never realized mattered quite so much.

Let’s get into it.

1. Start With the “Why”

One of the first ideas in the Teal course is surprisingly simple: athletes want to know why they are doing something.

That is especially important when we are asking young athletes to work hard, trust us, try something uncomfortable, or change the way they have been doing a technique.

“Because I said so” might get a drill started, but it does not necessarily build trust.

Imagine telling an athlete, “We’re spending ten minutes finishing single legs today because you’re getting to the leg consistently, but you’re losing the position before you score.”

Now she knows exactly what the drill is trying to fix.

The same idea applies to practice planning. If the room understands why conditioning is shorter today, why drilling is longer, or why you are spending extra time in one particular position, practice feels more intentional.

The course puts a lot of emphasis on trust, and explaining the “why” is one of the easiest ways to build it.

The larger mission behind the course is important too. Wrestle Like a Girl and USA Wrestling share a goal of helping girls and women grow into leaders through wrestling while giving coaches better education and resources.

That is worth remembering because coaching is never only about what happens during six minutes on a mat.

We are helping shape people.

2. Girls’ Wrestling Is Not “Coming.” It’s Here.

According to the course, more than 50,000 girls were wrestling as of 2023.

Think about how much that changes the wrestling landscape.

For years, a girl might have walked into a room and immediately been “the girl wrestler.” She may have been the only one on the team, the only one in her weight range, or the only girl at an event.

That reality is changing quickly.

Girls’ wrestling is becoming a normal part of the sport, and coaches need to be prepared for that moment instead of reacting to it after athletes arrive.

The Teal course also points back to 2013, when gender equity played an important role in helping save Olympic wrestling.

That history matters because women’s participation is not some side story in wrestling’s development. It has become part of wrestling’s future.

The course makes another point worth holding onto: girls have the right to feel safe and included in the sport.

That does not mean removing competition or lowering expectations.

It means creating an environment where female athletes can actually concentrate on becoming better wrestlers instead of spending half their energy wondering whether they belong there.

3. Getting Girls Into the Room Is Only Half the Job

Recruitment gets talked about constantly.

“How do we get more girls into wrestling?”

That is a good question.

But there is another question that might be even more important:

Once they walk through the door, why would they stay?

The Teal course spends a lot of time on retention, trust, confidence, and emotion because those things are connected.

Athletes want to know that their coach sees them as human beings, not just as bodies filling a weight class.

Allowing athletes to talk, ask questions, show frustration, admit that they are nervous, or tell you that something is bothering them does not make your room weak.

Quite the opposite.

The course makes it clear that showing emotion is not a sign of weakness.

Part of coaching is teaching athletes how to understand those emotions and manage them productively.

A girl who is terrified before her first tournament does not necessarily need to be told, “Stop being nervous.”

She may need a coach who says, “Being nervous is normal. Let’s talk about what you can control once the whistle blows.”

That is still toughness.

It is just useful toughness.

4. Your Tone Is Part of Your Coaching

Every coach has walked into a wrestling room and immediately felt its personality.

Some rooms feel focused but relaxed.

Some feel chaotic.

Some feel intense in a good way.

And some rooms make you feel like you should keep your head down and avoid saying anything.

That atmosphere does not happen by accident.

The Teal course points to three basic tools coaches use every day: tone, body language, and words.

None of those seem revolutionary until you start paying attention to them.

How do you react when a wrestler asks a question you have already answered twice?

What does your face look like when an athlete makes the same mistake again?

How do you talk to the girls in your room compared with the boys?

Do you joke with everyone the same way?

Do you unintentionally speak to female wrestlers more gently because you are worried about being too hard on them?

Do you go the other direction and become extra tough because you do not want anyone thinking you are treating them differently?

Those tiny decisions become culture.

And athletes notice far more than coaches sometimes realize.

5. Sometimes Inclusion Is a Sports Bra

Coaches love big ideas.

Leadership. Culture. Mental toughness. Discipline.

Sometimes inclusion is much less glamorous.

Sometimes it is making sure girls have appropriate high-cut singlets and access to sports bras.

That may not sound like some profound coaching philosophy, but imagine being a twelve-year-old girl who already feels self-conscious about walking into a wrestling room.

Then imagine being handed gear that makes you uncomfortable before practice even begins.

You have now created an obstacle that has absolutely nothing to do with wrestling.

The Teal course specifically highlights practical considerations like those because feeling welcome is not only emotional.

It is also physical.

Sometimes the best way to make an athlete feel like she belongs is simply to make sure the program was prepared for her to show up.

6. Culture Is Whatever Your Team Thinks Is Normal

Every wrestling room has rules.

Then there are the real rules.

Those are the things athletes learn by watching what actually happens.

Maybe the coach says everyone deserves respect, but one wrestler gets mocked constantly and nobody stops it.

Maybe the team says girls are equal members, but every example in practice still assumes every wrestler is male.

Maybe the coach says mistakes are part of learning, but immediately loses patience when someone struggles.

Athletes quickly figure out what is really acceptable.

That is why the Teal course emphasizes that team culture establishes norms and that inclusive culture has to be intentional.

You cannot just say, “Everyone is welcome here.”

You have to build a room where people actually experience that.

And one of the easiest signs that you have done it well is when your current wrestlers start recruiting for you.

The course specifically points out that one of the best ways to recruit girls is to have the girls already on the team invite their friends.

That makes perfect sense.

A flyer says wrestling is fun.

A girl telling her friend, “Come try practice with me,” proves it.

7. Puberty Changes More Than Height

This is one of the areas coaches need to understand well.

Girls generally begin puberty earlier than boys, and puberty can affect far more than physical appearance.

It can influence confidence, energy, hydration, body composition, muscle development, menstrual health, and the way an athlete feels about her own body.

That matters in any sport.

It really matters in a sport with weight classes.

The Teal course places a lot of importance on choosing a healthy weight class for girls.

During puberty, gaining body fat can be a normal and important part of development, including supporting the beginning of the menstrual cycle.

At the exact same time, an athlete may become more self-conscious about her body.

Now put that girl into a sport where people talk about body weight every day.

You can see where careless coaching can create problems.

A coach does not need to become a doctor or nutritionist.

But a coach absolutely needs to understand that “just lose five pounds” may not be a harmless sentence.

Helping girls compete closer to a natural, healthy weight can protect both physical and emotional health.

8. Function Over Form

This may be one of the best phrases in the entire course.

Function over form.

What can your body do?

Can it finish a double leg?

Can it hand fight for six minutes?

Can it explode off bottom?

Can it stay strong late in the third period?

Can it recover between matches?

That conversation is far healthier and far more useful than obsessing over appearance.

Female athletes can experience what the course describes as Female Athlete Body Duality, trying to navigate the body their sport rewards while also dealing with broader expectations about how girls and women are “supposed” to look.

That can be complicated.

A wrestling coach cannot control every message an athlete receives from social media, school, friends, or society.

But we can control the message inside our room.

Strong is useful.

Fueling your body is useful.

Performance matters.

Health matters.

What your body can accomplish matters.

That is a message worth repeating.

9. Wrestling Is Wrestling but Athletes Are Individuals

The Teal course acknowledges that different wrestling techniques and approaches may sometimes be appropriate when coaching girls and young women.

That does not mean we need an entirely separate sport.

It means coaches should actually coach the person standing in front of them.

Different athletes have different strength levels, flexibility, balance, proportions, movement patterns, and experience.

Sometimes one variation of a technique fits one athlete beautifully and another does not.

Great coaches adjust.

If you have ever watched two elite wrestlers execute the “same” move in completely different ways, you already understand this.

The goal is not to force every athlete to look identical.

The goal is to help each athlete become technically effective.

10. Stop Making Every Conversation About Winning

We all want to win.

Nobody signs up for a wrestling tournament hoping to collect character-building losses all weekend.

But if winning becomes the only measurement of progress, coaching gets very shallow very quickly.

The Teal course promotes a task-focused motivational climate, meaning the emphasis stays heavily on process and improvement.

Instead of only asking, “Did you win?” try asking, “Did you get to your offense?”

Instead of, “Why did you lose?” try, “What position decided that match?”

Instead of, “You need to wrestle harder,” try, “You were getting to your underhook, but you stopped creating angles once you got there.”

Those conversations give athletes something useful to do next.

Winning is an outcome.

Coaching lives in the process that creates the outcome.

11. Safeguarding Is Part of Coaching

Safeguarding means protecting children and adults from harm and creating a safe environment for sport.

It is not paperwork someone invented to annoy coaches.

It is part of running a responsible program.

The Teal course emphasizes communication between coaches, parents, and athletes as well as deliberate planning for practices, events, and travel.

Those conversations should happen before there is a problem.

The same is true for emergencies.

Every program should have an Emergency Action Plan, or EAP.

If something serious happens during practice, people should already know who is calling emergency services, who is staying with the athlete, who is contacting the family, and how the rest of the room is being managed.

Emergencies are already chaotic.

Your plan should not be.

12. Yes, Wrestling Is Supposed to Be Fun

There is a strange idea in some corners of sports that if kids are having fun, they must not be working hard enough.

Anyone who has spent enough time around wrestlers knows how ridiculous that is.

Some of the hardest practices athletes remember are also their favorites.

The Teal course introduces FUN Integration Theory, which focuses on the things that make kids want to continue participating.

Fun can mean competing hard.

It can mean learning something new.

It can mean finally hitting a move you have been struggling with for three weeks.

It can mean laughing with teammates between drills.

It can mean games, challenges, improvement, positive coaching, and feeling like you are part of something.

Fun does not mean lowering standards.

It means creating an experience athletes actually want to repeat.

And no, being a positive coach does not automatically make your team less successful.

You can be kind and demanding.

You can be encouraging and competitive.

You can tell an athlete, “That effort isn't good enough,” without humiliating her.

Those things are not contradictions.

They are coaching skills.

13. Coaches Need Coaching Too

One of my favorite ideas from the Teal course is that coaches need feedback just like athletes do.

That sounds obvious until someone actually critiques our coaching.

Suddenly we become very creative at explaining why everything we did was completely reasonable.

But if we expect wrestlers to accept correction, adjust, and improve, we should model the same behavior.

Ask another coach what they see.

Listen when athletes repeatedly struggle with the same explanation.

Notice when drills consistently become disorganized.

Pay attention when athletes stop asking questions.

Be willing to change something that is not working.

Good coaching is not about proving you already know everything.

It is about continuously becoming better at helping athletes learn.

What Should You Remember for the Teal Certification?

There are a handful of specific facts worth keeping in your head for the course. Girls’ wrestling had grown to more than 50,000 participants by 2023, and 2013 is the year highlighted in connection with gender equity helping save Olympic wrestling.

You should also remember the major themes behind the questions. Puberty generally begins earlier in girls. Healthy weight selection matters. Body image should be approached through both physical and emotional health. Coaches should emphasize function over form. A task-focused environment prioritizes process over outcome. Safeguarding, communication, and emergency planning matter. Team culture should be intentional. And fun, positive relationships, learning, and competition can all help athletes stay in the sport.

Most importantly, the course repeatedly returns to the same basic idea:

See the athlete.

Not just the weight class.

Not just the record.

Not just the potential state qualifier.

The athlete.

Understand what she needs. Explain why you're asking something of her. Give her room to learn. Hold her accountable. Help her become confident. Build a team culture she wants to be part of.

Girls’ wrestling is growing quickly.

Our job as coaches is to make sure the quality of coaching grows with it.

Build strong wrestlers. Build confident women. Build rooms they want to come back to. Practice Test for Teal course

Module 1: Foundations of The Teal Coaching Course (Coaching Girls and Women's Wrestling)	1) Wrestle Like a Girl and USA Wrestling have a shared goal to help girls and women grow to be leaders in life by supporting our coaches with resources and education. True False
Module 1: Foundations of The Teal Coaching Course (Coaching Girls and Women's Wrestling)	2) Being able to explain why we do things, in technique training and in our practice planning, helps build trust with our athletes, especially with our female athletes. True False
Module 1: Foundations of The Teal Coaching Course (Coaching Girls and Women's Wrestling)	3) Where can "Best Practices" for coaching Girl's and Women's Wrestling (as well as other key resources) be found? By clicking the "Resources" tab at the top of this course's menu (left side of the screen). I don't know.
Module 2: Call to Action	4) How many girls are wrestling as of 2023? 4,000 8,235 28,447 Over 50,000!
Module 2: Call to Action	5) What year did gender equity help save Olympic Wrestling? 2004 2009 2013 2021
Module 2: Call to Action	6) Why do coaches need to be prepared to meet this moment and provide quality coaching to girls and women in our sport? Because wrestling is inclusive, all of us can gain, learn, and share experiences from our sport. Because girls have some specific and unique needs and have a right to feel safe and included in our sport. All the above.
Module 5: Adolescent Development	7) In general, the onset of puberty happens earlier for girls than it does for boys? True False
Module 5: Adolescent Development	8) Why is picking a healthy weight class extremely critical for girls? Because gaining body fat is an essential part of supporting the start of her menstrual cycle. Because a girl's confidence during puberty can decrease and coaches can help by encouraging competition and training at a more natural weight. Because the menstrual cycle influences key training aspects such as Muscle Development, Energy, and Hydration. All the above.
Module 5: Adolescent Development	9) Communication and support of female athletes around body image should consider which of the following? Function over Form Supporting athletes while considering both their Physical and Emotional Health Understanding that navigating Female Athlete Body Duality can be difficult for them All the above.
Module 6: Wrestling Technique: Unique & Specific for Girls & Women	10) Different wrestling techniques and approaches are sometimes necessary when coaching girls and young women. True False
Module 6: Wrestling Technique: Unique & Specific for Girls & Women	11) A task focused motivational climate helps athletes increase their physical competence and confidence (ie: process over outcome). True False
Module 7: Safeguarding Athletes & Coaches	12) Safeguarding in sport is the process of protecting children and adults from harm by providing a safe place in which to play sport and be active. True False
Module 7: Safeguarding Athletes & Coaches	13) Clear communication between coaches, parents, and athletes as well as deliberate pre-planning for events, travel, and practices, helps us all ensure we provide athletes a safe, positive, and healthy space to learn and grow. True False
Module 7: Safeguarding Athletes & Coaches	14) Coaches having an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) and communicating that plan to all program stakeholders, help us respond quickly and appropriately to emergencies helping us safeguard our athletes and staff. True False
Module 8: FUN Integration Theory & Best Coaching Practices	15) Implementing the Fun Integration Theory helps us recruit and retain kids because the environment makes them want to stay (ie: trying hard, positive team dynamics, positive coaching, learning and improving, games and competition, and more!) True False
Module 8: FUN Integration Theory & Best Coaching Practices	16) Finding critical feedback, both positive and constructive, on how we coach is essential in continuing to grow to be our best and to set the example for our athletes and kids. True False
Module 8: FUN Integration Theory & Best Coaching Practices	17) Being a nice coach and sharing positive energy automatically means our team won't win as much. True False
Module 3, Part 2: Welcoming Girls & Keeping them in the Room	18) Valuing athletes as human beings and allowing them to share emotions are great ways to do which of the following: Improving retention of athletes Building trust with athletes Helping athletes feel safe and build their confidence as athletes and as humans All the above.
Module 3, Part 2: Welcoming Girls & Keeping them in the Room	19) Showing emotions is sign of weakness. True False
Module 3, Part 2: Welcoming Girls & Keeping them in the Room	20) An important part of coaching is helping athletes learn how to handle and positively manage emotions. True False
Module 3, Part 2: Welcoming Girls & Keeping them in the Room	21) What are some ways coaches can help create a warm and inclusive wrestling environment? Tone Body Language Words All the Above.
Module 3, Part 2: Welcoming Girls & Keeping them in the Room	22) Providing girls high cut singlets and sports bras are just a few ways to help female wrestlers feel safe and welcome? True False
Module 3, Part 2: Welcoming Girls & Keeping them in the Room	23) Valuing athletes as human beings and allowing them to share emotions are great ways to do which of the following? Improving retention of athletes Building trust with athletes Helping athletes feel safe and build their confidence All the above.
Module 4, Part 2: Team Culture	24) Team culture establishes norms of acceptable behavior conveying to members what is allowed and what is not. True False
Module 4, Part 2: Team Culture	25) Creating an inclusive culture requires us to be deliberate and intentional in our actions. True False
Module 4, Part 2: Team Culture	26) One of the best ways to recruit girls for your program is to have the girls you already have on your team invite others. True False
Module 4, Part 2: Team Culture	27) With the rapid growth of girls and womens wrestling, it is healthy for us all to take a look at the culture of their wrestling rooms and programs to ensure we're inclusive and welcoming. True False
Module 4, Part 2: Team Culture	28) Our complex backgrounds and lifetime of experiences can either help us fit in or make us feel excluded from a group or team. True False
Module 4, Part 2: Team Culture	29) Meeting athletes where they're at and understanding their particular circumstances can help more young people stick with wrestling to learn and grow through our sport. True False