The Indiana High School Athletic Association voted to fully allow boys' volleyball and girls' wrestling starting in the 2024-25 school year during its annual bylaw review Monday afternoon. Both were classified as “emerging sports” by the IHSAA in 2022.
Both sports are scheduled to have official IHSAA state tournaments in 2025. The IBVCA has been hosting the boys volleyball state tournament since 1994, and the IHSWCA began hosting the girls wrestling tournament in 2017.
Currently, girls wrestling has more than 1,400 wrestlers in 177 schools across the state, and more than 100 schools have boys volleyball teams. Four of them, Center Grove, Franklin, Greenwood Christian, and Whiteland, are in Johnson County.
Unified Flag Football was the last sport fully recognized by the IHSAA, making its official debut in 2018.
Also on Monday, a bill to add women's lacrosse as an emerging sport was tabled until the June executive committee meeting. Another bill, authored by Franklin Superintendent Steve Arhaus, that would have changed the criteria for classifying schools based on the number of competitions in a particular sport failed because there was no motion. The Board asked the IHSAA to consider this action when the next realignment cycle arrives in two years.
Changes to out-of-season limited contact rules have been approved to allow two-hour sessions three times a week for team and individual sports.