Celebrating & normalizing the strength of women through stories of effort, excellence and overcoming adversity.
At the most basic level, wrestling is just a sport. But the more we know about wrestling the more we know it’s not actually about wrestling.
At the most basic level, Transition Wrestling exists to report collegiate women’s wrestling news.
BUT . . .
We live through the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the stories we know about others that help shape our own — that means there’s this incredibly large part of our lives that’s based on documentation.
“If you ask a group of kids who their favorite NBA or NFL player is, they could name off numerous favorites depending on preference & where they’re from. We want to make sure that if we ask female wrestlers who their role-models are, that they recall the story of a female they personally identify with — maybe their home town, their state, their demographics — wrestling at the collegiate level. That’s inspiring and that helps them feel like their big dreams are wildly manageable.” Gabby Lord-Klein
We’ve identified a need that, if met, has the potential to impact many female wrestlers, fans and those connected to the community — now and in the future.
Is the first and only platform of its kind to create content focused on covering collegiate women’s wrestling news.
Our mission is to strengthen the global position of women through stories of effort, excellence and overcoming adversity – a concept we’re rooted in called transitional excellence. Our opportunity right now is to help shape the future of women’s wrestling as understood by the experiences of women wrestlers.
We’re in the fastest growing sport in the United States.
In 2019, more than 50 collegiate programs will offer women scholarships. Plus, 18 states have now sanctioned girl’s wrestling at the interscholastic level. Demographics from the 2019 women’s collegiate national tournaments suggest that states with sanctioned girls wrestling provide more women an opportunity to leverage higher education as a means to achieve relative social and economic success than states without sanctioned wrestling. (approx. 75% of registered athletes were from states with sanctioned girls wrestling, i.e., sanctioned states have higher rates of participation and therefore are recruited and represented in greater numbers in college).
The wrestling community is filled with stories of the sport bringing otherwise unimaginable experiences and opportunities to a widely diverse population. Life is much larger than sport, but sport can be the vehicle that leads us to opportunities.
Transition Wrestling is a small business with the potential to inform and entertain an audience on a national platform.
You know that feeling when where you’re so excited you could be sick but also just want to run around? Same. I am so excited to share this vision with the world — nervous and maybe nauseous, but just overwhelmingly excited to get to work; to get past the ‘securing funding’ part so we can just do what we’re here to do.
At this point in my life, that same fire and energy I felt when I set goals and committed myself to the pursuit of a national championship, that’s what I feel about the process, mission and vision of Transition Wrestling. Except that it feels more centered, more whole, more real. It’s that something worth showing up for every day and working on through the exhaustion, doubts and fears. I feel small compared to the team required, but entirely capable of bringing it together.
The growth of Transition Wrestling will reflect our growth as a team. There is an endless amount to learn, and our pursuit and enjoyment of the experience is what will provide fans the quality and connection they crave. We’re striving to be our best so that we can provide our audience with content that reflects our continued efforts.
We will be a workplace where team members excel in their areas of interest, expertise and pay attention to the interconnectedness of their responsibilities as people. We value conceptual thought, curiosity and a willingness to act.
We are campaigning to raise $125,000 that would primarily go toward staffing a team of women from the wrestling community with expertise in journalism/reporting, digital media, design, marketing, research and other interdisciplinary fields.
Our major roadblock right now is that this project requires immediate full-time attention, but we don’t have the funds to staff a team.
This campaign alone has involved women from Wisconsin, Missouri, California, Nevada, Idaho, Washington and the support of many others.
I started this project in 2017 – these pictures were from then, when I was still living in Oakland, California and working in finance. I knew what it was but I didn’t know what it would be. I have all of the original documentation and iterations from the 3am (nights?), and to this day it amazes me how much can be accomplished by just doing when you aren’t even sure what needs to be done.
FOUNDING CONCEPT: Transitional Excellence
Wrestling is a sport built on transitions. Every action creates opportunity for reaction, and every reaction creates opportunity for subsequent action. To build transitional excellence on the mats, coaches and athletes must think openly about how the body flows in conjunction with the opponent. Some actions are immediate, others require critical thinking and maneuvers new to the body in a match situation. On the mat transitional excellence requires the athlete to think under conditions of extreme pressure and exhaustion.
Transitional excellence off the mats is an individuals ability to think critically and rationally, to become experts in specific fields with an aptitude for change, to navigate through positive/negative challenges and ambiguity free from paralysis, to assert knowledge confidently, to remain humble and take care of the self first in order to do better for the self and others.
The project requires immediate full time effort from a team of individuals that we don’t have funding to create. The challenge creates our biggest risk.
Thank you, for your time and consideration in providing backing for this project.