The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and its National Administrative Council (NAC) voted to approve women’s wrestling as the association’s 28th national championship. The vote took place at the annual NAIA National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, on Saturday.

With the vote, the sport moves from invitational to full national championship status. For any sport in the NAIA to achieve championship status, it must have a minimum of 40 institutions sponsoring the sport as a varsity program to receive consideration.

“This is a great day for the sport of wrestling and all of our women’s wrestling student-athletes,” said NAIA President and CEO Jim Carr. “Women’s wrestling has seen sustained growth, and we are proud to become the first collegiate athletics association to offer this as a championship sport.”

The NAIA will begin work on determining several logistics in terms of national championship format and qualification immediately and will announce during the summer.

“It’s an exciting time for NAIA Women’s Wrestling. I feel like we have been building to this for so many years, so to finally be at this point is amazing,” said Carl Murphree, NAIA Women’s Wrestling Coaches’ Association President. “The NAIA has led the charge in women’s wrestling and gaining championship status is a big step forward.”

CMU’s Vice President for Enrollment Management and Athletics, Joe Parisi, was instrumental in bringing women’s wrestling, along with the entire wrestling program, to CMU two years ago. “There’s a ton of girls across the country who are so talented and are high-caliber wrestlers,” he said. “The NAIA has always been pioneers to offer opportunities to all and have led the charge for women’s wrestling. At CMU, we were glad that we were able to offer both men’s and women’s wrestling at the collegiate level and look forward to big things on the horizon.”