The Road to Peoria
2026–27 IKWF Senior Girls Wrestling Preview
By Illinois Matwomen
At 185 pounds, two Illinois wrestlers finished last March with their hands raised. Unity’s Brielle Molina pinned Jade Zambrano for the IKWF Senior title. East St. Louis’ Jordyn Alexander pinned Emory Walker for the Novice title. This winter Illinois Matwomen projects both at Senior 185. A meeting in Peoria would bring last season’s two champions at that weight onto the same mat.
The lighter weights have a matchup just as good. At 80, two-time IESA boys state champion Kayleigh Vest shares a projected weight with Madison Brophy, who already owns an IKWF Senior championship. At 90, Zoe Atwell and Lila Carson have traded wins across two state tournaments. Those are three brackets worth following from the first weekend in December.
How girls earned their own finals
The Illinois Kids Wrestling Federation (IKWF) organizes club wrestling for Illinois youth. In its winter folkstyle series, wrestlers represent their local clubs at regionals and advance through sectionals to the state finals. The idea dates to 1970, when Ron Silverstein began organizing the state series after Illinois wrestling chairman Ken Kraft asked him to build a program for wrestlers in eighth grade and younger. The first IKWF state championships followed in 1971.
Girls were building a field of their own long before they had a championship mat at the IKWF finals. A contemporary account counted 48 girls at the Jon Davis Kids Open in Springfield in January 2013. That March, an all-girls state tournament in Yorkville drew 99 competitors, including 78 in kindergarten through eighth grade. World champion Adeline Gray helped warm them up. In 2016, Chicago’s Kennedy Blades won the IKWF Novice title at 115 pounds against boys. Eight years later she won Olympic silver in Paris.
March 2024 brought a different milestone. At Rockford’s BMO Center, the IKWF held its first sanctioned girls Senior and Novice state finals alongside the boys. Crystal Lake Wizards wrestler Tenli Madriles pinned Bryn Ouimette of Toss Em Up at 71 pounds to become the first girls Senior champion crowned that day. The 2027 finals will be the fourth time the girls Senior champions are crowned.
For this season’s Senior state series, wrestlers must be in eighth grade or below and ages 12 through 14 on December 31, 2026. Twelve-year-olds also qualify by age for Novice. There are 16 girls weight classes, from 75 through 240 pounds. Competition opens December 5. Regionals are February 27 or 28, sectionals are March 6, and the state championships return to the Peoria Civic Center March 11–13, 2027.
