Bald Eagle Area grad Dallis Dillon set to make history for Lock Haven women’s wrestling
Bald Eagle Area High School graduate Dallis Dillon has the opportunity to make history for Lock Haven University on Thursday when she’ll become the first athlete to compete for the school’s newly formed women’s wrestling program.
Dillon, a senior at LHU, will take on East Stroudsburg’s Josselinne Campos in a three-period, 130-pound exhibition match held under freestyle rules, starting at about 6:30 p.m., before the men’s 7 p.m. dual with Bloomsburg, at Thomas Fieldhouse.
“I think it’s pretty important to let people know that there is a program, that the program’s up-and-coming and that girls who want to wrestle have a future now in college that they might’ve not had before,” Dillon told the Centre Daily Times.
Inspired by her older brothers, Dillon started wrestling at about four years old and continued through junior high at BEA. From the start, her parents were supportive, her mom even going to the superintendent to get permission for her daughter to wrestle on the boys’ team in high school, since there wasn’t a girls’ team. However, as a varsity softball and soccer player, and president of her senior class, Dillon did eventually give the sport up as she became increasingly busy with other other activities.
But giving up wrestling was always a decision she regretted.
When Lock Haven announced in May that it would become the 59th college to add a women’s wrestling program, Dillon said it didn’t take long to decide she wanted to be a part of it.
“I always told myself if I ever had the chance to wrestle again, I’d take that opportunity, because my first love of sport was definitely wrestling,” she said. “It spoke to me in a way, and it’s aggressive and you have to work so hard. That’s what I love about it and that’s what I missed about it so much. So when this opportunity came, I hurried up and got coach Ronnie Perry’s email and emailed him.”
Women’s wrestling is one of the fastest-growing sports across the country, and was in June recommended by the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics to become an official emerging sport. According to statistics kept by the National Wrestling Coaches Association, the number of girls who wrestle in high school has increased by 15,758 from 1994-2018, and 63 colleges now support a women’s program.
Women’s wrestling has been an Olympic sport since 2004.
At Lock Haven, the decision to add Division II women’s wrestling to the school’s other 19 athletic offerings was sparked by a mix of those in the athletic department and alumni donors, and with support from President Robert Pignatello, Perry, who’s also an assistant for the men’s team, said.
“Interest in competitive women’s wrestling is on the rise,” Pignatello said in a release when the program was announced in May. “With Lock Haven’s long history of wrestling success, the expansion of our wrestling program to include women’s wrestling makes LHU athletics even more competitive.”
Perry, a 2018 NCAA Division I national finalist his senior year at Lock Haven, was tapped to coach the program at the end of May. The timing of the program’s launch has been a challenge, Perry said, as he was unable to do much outside recruiting before the start of the season. However, the team has three women on its roster this semester and is adding another in the spring.
The exhibition match is the only scheduled competition for the team this year.
“I think the next step is to continue to recruit and get quality athletes on the team for next year,” Perry said. “And obviously as you start building the roster, then we’re able to compete a little bit more often and continue to gain that exposure that wrestling as a sport needs, and also women’s wrestling as a whole needs.”
Coming back to wrestling after a hiatus has been a challenge for Dillon. While she says her wrestling instincts are still in tact, “wrestling’s not easy,” and she had work to do to get back into shape both physically and mentally. But with her knowledge of the sport, enthusiasm and willingness to continue learning and working hard, Perry said Dillon has become a leader for the young program.
It’s those qualities he said that also make Dillon an exemplary athlete to be the first to showcase the work the program is doing to those outside the wrestling room.
“I just wanted to get the program in the spotlight a little bit and make sure people are seeing us compete, and Dallis is a great athlete to have be the first to compete for us,” he said. “The thing I’m looking forward to is we’ve been working hard and working on a lot of specific things, just a lot of effort and a lot of fight, and I think everyone will appreciate what we’re starting to do here.”
Since it was announced last week that Dillon would be wrestling in the program’s first competition, Dillon said the support she’s received — especially from people she knew from high school or her hometown of Howard — has been overwhelming. She can hardly go out or on social media without people asking her when her match is or wishing her good luck.
Having that support, she said, has provided validation for all the work they’ve put into getting women’s wrestling at Lock Haven off the ground.
With the exhibition, both Perry and Dillon said they’re hoping to inspire more women to come out and give the program a try.
“If you’re willing to work hard, that’s really all you need, and somebody who’s willing to be coachable,” Dillon said. “People used to come up to me all the time and say, ‘Oh, I wish my parents would let me wrestle.’ And I’ve been telling girls lately, that are younger than me who say ‘I want to wrestle,’ that you have a future. It’s not just you’re going to wrestle and be done with it, there’s so much more to build to and so much more opportunity now that we have a women’s team.
“And it’s a growing sport now, so definitely go for it.”
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 3:12 PM.
