High school wrestling weight classes for 2026-27

The NFHS tables for 2026-27

The weight classes every state picks from were set by the NFHS Wrestling Rules Committee in 2021 and took effect on 1 July 2023. The announcement did two things at once: it created the first separate weight classes for girls in high school wrestling, and it let each state association decide whether to run twelve, thirteen or fourteen classes for each sex. Before that, the boys' classes were a single national list.

Here are all six lists, exactly as the NFHS published them.

Three structural points are worth reading off that table before any state detail.

The spacing is not even. In the 14-class boys' list the gaps are six or seven pounds through the lower half, then widen to eight, ten, fifteen, twenty-five and finally seventy pounds at the top. That reflects where the athletes are: there are far more high-school boys between 110 and 160 pounds than between 190 and 285, so the classes are packed where the population is dense.

The girls' list is shifted down and compressed. It starts six pounds lighter than the boys' list, moves in five-pound steps from 100 to 145, and then opens up. The heaviest girls' class, 235, is fifty pounds lighter than the boys' 285.

Fewer classes does not simply mean deleting some. In the 13-class boys' option, every class up to 189 is a different number from its 14-class counterpart. A wrestler who certified for 106 in a 14-class state is a 107 in a 13-class state. That matters for athletes who compete across state lines, which is covered further down.

The NFHS also sets participation context in its own releases. Its April 2026 news release cites the 2024-25 participation survey: wrestling was the sixth most popular sport for boys, with 300,214 participants in 11,526 schools, and twelfth for girls, with 74,064 participants in 8,100 schools. That growth in girls' wrestling is the reason separate classes exist at all.

What changed for 2026-27, and what did not

The weight classes themselves did not change for 2026-27. We found no NFHS release announcing new class numbers for this season, and every state document for 2026-27 we could read uses the lists above.

What did change is the floor underneath them. On 17 April 2026 the NFHS announced that the minimum body-fat percentage for females had been raised from 12 to 19 percent, effective with the 2026-27 season. The release describes revisions to rules 1-5-1 and 1-5-2 as two of 18 rule changes recommended by the Wrestling Rules Committee at its 29–31 March meeting in Indianapolis, reviewed by the Rules Review Committee and approved by the NFHS Board of Directors.

The committee's stated reasoning, per the release, was that peer-reviewed research data showed a higher body-fat floor for high-school girls establishes a safer margin for minimal wrestling weight for girls intent on reaching a lower weight class. The committee reviewed material from the National Wrestling Coaches Association and had the backing of the NFHS Sports Medicine Advisory Committee. The release quotes Elliot Hopkins, the NFHS liaison to the committee, saying the change "definitely will help those girls in the larger weight classes".

The same release lists other changes that touch the scale indirectly. Teams now have the opportunity to weigh in by team if that is more practical. Byes do not count as a match, and do not count toward the maximum of six matches per day or ten over a two-day event. The digital 2026-27 rules book was scheduled for July via NFHS Digital and the print edition for late July.

So the practical summary for this season: same classes, a new minimum for girls, and a small weigh-in procedure change. The body-fat change is the one that moves individual athletes into different classes, and the worked scenario later in this article shows by how much.

How states adopt the tables, state by state

Each state association writes its own wrestling regulations on top of the NFHS rulebook. The table below lists only what we could read in a state association's own document, with the season that document covers. Where we could only find an older season or a secondary source, the table says so.

Texas. The UIL page for the current season states there are 14 weight classes for boys and 14 for girls, lists them exactly as the NFHS 14-class tables above, and says a team may enter one athlete per class. The same page dates the first tournament or dual meet to 9 November 2026, which is how we know it is the 2026-27 text.

Ohio. The OHSAA 2026-27 regulations adopt "those weight classes adopted by the NFHS" for events that are predominantly male and the NFHS girls' list for female-only events. Ohio adds two things most states do not print. A freshman-only event adds a 98-pound class below 106; the list as printed reads 98, 106, 113 through 215, and 285, which is fifteen numbers under a heading that says fourteen classes, and we do not know which is intended. And the heaviest class has a minimum weight: 210 pounds for the boys' 285 class, and 184 pounds for the girls' 235 class, each rising by two pounds with the growth allowance on and after 25 December. Ohio also states that when a school wrestles an out-of-state opponent, the weight classes of the state where the competition is held are the ones wrestled.

California. The CIF Southern Section's 2026-27 Blue Book prints the state boys' and girls' classes as the NFHS 14-class lists and states that California provides 14 classes per NFHS rules with the two-pound growth allowance on 1 January.

Florida. The FHSAA 2025-26 sport manual lists the same 14 and 14, phrased as "106 pounds and under" and so on. We did not locate a 2026-27 edition during research, so the Florida row describes last season's document.

New York. The NYSPHSAA 2025-26 handbook requires fourteen classes for all dual meets and tournaments: 103, 110, 118, 126, 132, 138, 144, 150, 157, 165, 175, 190, 215 and 285. The bottom two classes differ from the NFHS list, which starts 106, 113, 120. The handbook is explicit that after the 25 December growth allowance the effective limits become 105, 112, 120, 128 and so on up to 287.

Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the clearest example of a state using the 13-class option. The 2026 PIAA individual state championships, held 5–7 March 2026 in Hershey, ran boys at 107, 114, 121, 127, 133, 139, 145, 152, 160, 172, 189, 215 and 285, and girls at 100, 106, 112, 118, 124, 130, 136, 142, 148, 155, 170, 190 and 235. Both lists match the NFHS 13-class tables exactly. We read those numbers in FloWrestling's championship listing, not in a PIAA document, and did not find a PIAA-published list for 2026-27.

Illinois. We could not read the IHSA's own terms and conditions for either season: the file returned during research was not a readable document. We do not print an Illinois table as a result. The IHSA publishes its terms and conditions on its wrestling pages each season.

The pattern is that most large states took the fourteen-class NFHS menu unchanged, a few adjusted the ends, and Pennsylvania took the thirteen-class menu. The only way to know which applies to a given meet is the host state's document.

The growth allowance: two pounds, on a date that varies

Every state we checked grants a two-pound growth allowance partway through the season. The idea is spelled out in Ohio's regulations for 7th and 8th graders: the allowance exists to accommodate natural growth, and "it is not intended to assist a youngster to 'starve' himself / herself into a lower weight class." In effect every class limit rises by two pounds on the stated date. A 120-pound class becomes a 122-pound class for the rest of the season.

What does not travel across state lines is the date.

Two rules recur almost everywhere, and they are the ones that catch people.

The allowance does not lower anyone's floor. Texas puts it in one sentence: the two-pound growth allowance does not allow a wrestler to drop below their minimum weight class. Florida's manual gives a worked question: a wrestler certified at a minimum of 107.5 does not qualify for 106 when the allowance takes effect. The allowance widens the class, not the athlete's permission.

In several states you must have made scratch weight first. Ohio says the allowance can only be used by a wrestler who has certified at the desired class. Florida requires a wrestler to compete at scratch weight in the class at least once before the district tournament to use the allowance there. Iowa goes further: the first time a wrestler uses the allowance, they declare their certified class and their intent not to wrestle lower, and cannot recertify beneath it. Texas is the notable exception in the documents we read: its certification page states that a wrestler does not have to have weighed in previously at scratch weight to use the allowance, provided they are certified for the class.

Weigh-in timing: one hour for duals, two for tournaments

The documents we read agree on the headline windows. Florida's 2025-26 manual states that wrestlers must weigh in not more than one hour before the scheduled start of a dual and a maximum of two hours before the first session of each day of an individually bracketed tournament. Georgia's published weigh-in Q&A describes the same one-hour limit for duals, and New York's handbook the same one and two hours.

The NFHS moved to a single procedure for duals, multiple duals and tournaments in 2020-21, when it rewrote the weigh-in rules so that boys and girls could weigh in together in the same lineup, required a legal uniform at weigh-in, banned shoes and ear guards on the scale, and stated that no additional weight allowance would be granted for the uniform. Before that change, weigh-ins were separated by sex and had to be supervised by a referee of each sex, which the NFHS said schools had struggled to staff.

State details layered on top:

• New York replaces the national window with a maximum and a minimum: weigh-ins for a dual run from one hour to thirty minutes before the start, and for a tournament from two hours to thirty minutes before the first session. Second-day tournament weigh-ins must take place on the second day; weighing in at the end of day one is not allowed.
• Georgia's Q&A adds the procedure people ask about most: a wrestler on a single scale may step on and off twice; with several scales, twice on the first and once on each of the others; once the next class is called, the previous one is closed. Athletes in the staging area may not do anything intended to lose weight.
• Consecutive-day allowances are separate from the growth allowance. New York grants one extra pound when a school has back-to-back competitions, with 48 hours' notice, and one pound when a contest is postponed a day for reasons outside the school's control. Pennsylvania's manual describes a one- or two-pound consecutive-day allowance and says it cannot be used to speed up a descent plan.

The consequence for an athlete is simple and often underestimated. With at most an hour between the scale and the first whistle, there is no meaningful rehydration window of the kind professional fighters with day-before weigh-ins are dealing with. Whatever state an athlete arrives in at weigh-in is, roughly, the state they wrestle in.

The certification floor: why the table is not a menu

The weight-class table tells you what classes exist. It does not tell you which of them a particular wrestler may enter. That comes from the weight-management programme every state association must run under NFHS rule 1-5-1.

The UIL quotes the rule's three components on its certification page: a specific gravity not to exceed 1.025; a body-fat assessment no lower than seven percent for males and nineteen percent for females; and a monitored weekly weight-loss plan not to exceed 1.5 percent a week. The same structure appears in Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, Florida, New York and Iowa, with local variations in instrument, timing and arithmetic.

In outline, it works the same way everywhere:

1. Hydration first. The wrestler provides a urine sample, and if specific gravity is above 1.025 the assessment stops. Texas and Pennsylvania require a 24-hour wait before retesting; Florida's 2025-26 manual requires 48 hours.
2. Body composition. A certified assessor measures body fat, by skinfold calipers in Texas, Pennsylvania and Iowa, by ultrasound in California, by InBody in New York, by bioelectrical impedance or skinfold in Florida.
3. The floor. The system computes the weight the athlete would be at the minimum body-fat percentage. The lowest class at or above that weight is the athlete's minimum weight class.
4. The descent. A plan limits loss toward that class to 1.5 percent of the assessed weight per week. The UIL's own example: 1.5 percent of 150 pounds is 2.25 pounds a week.

The variances matter at the margin. California's calculator automatically applies a 1 percent variance at the certified minimum: the Blue Book's example is a boy whose weight at 7 percent is 150, who is shown as certified at 148.5. Texas applies a 2 percent variance to each varsity wrestler's minimum wrestling weight. Both are state choices, and they are the reason an identical assessment can land on different classes in different states.

The full mechanics, including how the NCAA version differs, are in wrestling weight certification, explained. For the arithmetic on your own assessment, the wrestling weight certification calculator computes the body-fat floor and the weekly descent from the numbers an assessor gives you.

The 12 versus 19 percent problem in state documents

Here is the one inconsistency every girls' wrestler and coach should know about before the assessment window opens.

The NFHS has raised the female floor to 19 percent for 2026-27. Texas already prints it: the UIL certification page states 7 percent for males and 19 percent for females for varsity wrestlers, and adds that sub-varsity wrestlers remain on the previous programme. Iowa's 2026-27 body-composition packet for assessors prints 7 percent and, in parentheses, 19 percent for females.

But two 2026-27 documents we read still say 12. The OHSAA's Wrestling 2026-2027 sports regulations state that a minimum wrestling weight "based on 7% body fat for males and 12% for females" is required for all senior high wrestlers. The CIF Southern Section's 2026-27 Blue Book says the same in its weight-management note and in its class-determination rules. Pennsylvania's manual and Florida's manual are 2025-26 editions and say 12, which was correct for that season. New York's 2025-26 handbook says 14 percent for females, a state figure above the old national minimum.

We do not know whether those documents will be amended, whether the assessment software those states use has already been updated, or whether the text simply lags the rule. The NFHS rule sets a minimum that state programmes must meet, so a state document still printing 12 percent does not by itself tell you which number the assessor will enter. What it does tell you is that the question is worth asking, in writing, before a girl certifies. The difference is not small, as the next section shows.

A worked scenario: what the new floor does to a real-shaped number

This is arithmetic on the published rules, framed as a scenario. It is not a prediction for any individual, and it ignores the state variances described above so the effect of the rule change is visible on its own.

Take a girl who weighs 130 pounds at assessment with a measured body fat of 24 percent. Her fat-free mass is 76 percent of 130, which is 98.8 pounds.

• Under the old 12 percent floor, her minimum weight is 98.8 divided by 0.88, or about 112.3 pounds. In the 14-class girls' table, the lowest class at or above that is 115.
• Under the new 19 percent floor, her minimum weight is 98.8 divided by 0.81, or about 122.0 pounds. The lowest class at or above that is 125.

Two classes higher, from the same measurement. That is the entire effect of the rule change in one line, and it is why the NFHS release frames it as a safety margin for girls "intent on achieving a lower weight class". A girl who wrestled 115 last season at a similar composition will not be eligible for it this season unless her fat-free mass has fallen, which for a growing adolescent is not something to aim at.

Now a boy, to show the descent limit. He weighs 150 pounds at assessment with 12 percent body fat, so 132 pounds of fat-free mass. At the 7 percent floor his minimum weight is 132 divided by 0.93, about 141.9 pounds, so his minimum class in the 14-class table is 144. His descent is capped at 1.5 percent of 150, or 2.25 pounds a week. From 150 to 144 is six pounds, so on a linear reading of the rule the plan would not show him eligible at 144 until roughly the third week. The exact date depends on how each state's software counts days.

The general tool for turning a target date and a starting weight into a weekly rate is the weight cut calculator. For a high-school athlete, the certification plan is the binding constraint and the calculator only restates it.

How to choose a weight class

Choosing a class is the question most families actually came to this page with, and the documents answer part of it directly. The rest is judgement that belongs to the athlete, the coach and, where there is any doubt about health, a physician.

Start from the floor, not the table. The certification result tells you the lowest class you may enter. The OHSAA says it plainly: it "does not advocate that a wrestler's established minimum weight is the athlete's best weight, but simply the minimum weight at which the athlete will be allowed to compete." A floor is a limit, not a recommendation.

Remember the one-class rule upward. Under NFHS rule 4-4-2, as quoted in the CIF Blue Book, a wrestler may not wrestle more than one class above the class their actual weigh-in weight qualifies them for. A wrestler who weighs in for 132 may wrestle 132 or 138, not 144. That limits how much flexibility a lineup can buy on the day.

Know how moving up affects your plan. Several states penalise yo-yoing. Ohio's regulations say that a wrestler who weighs in and competes more than one class above their plan's minimum for that day forfeits that minimum class and any lower classes remaining on the plan. Iowa ties declaration of the growth allowance to a promise not to wrestle lower. These rules exist to stop the season-long cycle of losing and regaining weight.

Account for the growth allowance and the calendar. A wrestler certified comfortably above a class boundary in November may find the boundary moves two pounds toward them in late December or early January. Postseason certification deadlines also vary: Pennsylvania's 2025-26 manual locked the minimum wrestling weight on 13 February 2026 for the postseason; California's Blue Book requires assessment between 15 October and 15 January.

Weigh-in timing removes the rehydration escape hatch. With one hour before a dual, the weight on the scale is effectively the weight on the mat. The evidence on rapid weight loss comes almost entirely from adult athletes with longer recovery windows, and it does not transfer to adolescents; this site does not offer a cutting protocol for minors and neither does any source cited here. The appropriate framing for a high-school wrestler is a sustainable competition weight, fuelled for training, which is the subject of a wrestling weight-cut diet and meal plan. Where a coach or parent is concerned about an athlete's weight loss, that is a conversation for the athlete's physician.

If you are a girl, confirm the percentage first. Given the 12 versus 19 percent inconsistency in some 2026-27 documents, ask which figure your state's assessor will apply before choosing a target class.

Why the rules look like this: the history in one paragraph

High-school weight rules descend from a specific event. In November and December 1997, three previously healthy collegiate wrestlers in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan died while engaged in rapid weight loss to qualify for competition, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the cluster in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in 1998. The NCAA built its weight-certification programme in response, and the NFHS rule requiring state weight-management programmes followed. An NFHS article from October 2022 set out the three components still in the rule today: hydration, a body-fat floor, and a weekly loss limit.

The hydration test at the front of that system is useful but imperfect. A 2024 quantitative review in Translational Sports Medicine found fat-free mass positively associated with urine specific gravity in athletes and active adults, weakly in men and moderately in women, which means a fixed threshold is more likely to flag lean, muscular athletes as underhydrated. For a wrestler who fails, that usually means a 24- or 48-hour wait and a retest, not a verdict. How hydration thresholds behave across combat sports is covered in hydration testing at weigh-ins.

Middle school and junior high weight classes

There is no national middle-school table. The NFHS lists above are for high school, and junior-high classes are set by each state association, where they are set at all. We found two published lists.

Ohio, 7th and 8th grade (OHSAA 2026-27 regulations).

Ohio runs no weight-management plan at this level. Its regulations say coaches should encourage participation and de-emphasise weight loss, and that 7th and 8th graders do not certify at a class: they are eligible by their strict weight only. The two-pound growth allowance applies to every class on 25 December.

Pennsylvania, junior high and middle school, grades 7–9 (PIAA District II 2025-26 handbook).

Pennsylvania's junior-high rules, as printed in the District II handbook, allow a student to wrestle one class above the class their stripped weight qualifies for, set bouts at three periods of 90 seconds, and describe an optional format in which wrestlers are matched by actual weight, within five pounds up to 138 and ten pounds above. Pennsylvania's weight-control manual applies its growth allowance to junior-high as well as senior-high wrestlers.

Texas lists junior-high wrestling on a separate UIL page, but we did not find a class table there, and we do not print one from other sources. If you are looking for a junior-high table for any other state, the place to look is that state association's handbook for the current season.

Competing across state lines

Wrestlers who travel for tournaments meet all of these differences at once. Ohio's regulations settle the class question with a simple rule: the weight classes of the state in which competition is held are the classes wrestled. The documents we read do not settle the certification question in the same way. A wrestler certified under one state's variance, instrument and female body-fat figure carries that minimum into another state's lineup, and how the host reconciles it is a matter for the host's rules and the coaches involved.

The clean illustration is Pennsylvania against a 14-class neighbour. A boy at the bottom of the lineup is a 107 in Pennsylvania and a 106 in Ohio; a boy at 172 in Pennsylvania has no exact counterpart in the 14-class table, sitting between 165 and 175. None of that changes his certified minimum weight, which is a number in pounds, not a class. It changes which class that number puts him in.

Freestyle and Greco-Roman events under USA Wrestling and United World Wrestling, and college wrestling under the NCAA, are entirely separate rulebooks with their own classes and, in the NCAA's case, a different certification programme. The college side is laid out in college wrestling weight classes.

What we could not verify

• The NFHS rulebook text. The 2026-27 Wrestling Rules Book is a purchased publication and we did not read it. We rely on NFHS news releases and on state associations quoting rule 1-5-1, rule 4-4-2 and rule 4-5. Rule numbers and wording should be confirmed against the current book.
• Pennsylvania's 2026-27 classes. The 13-class lists come from FloWrestling's listing of the March 2026 state championships, which match the NFHS 13-class option. We found no PIAA-published 2026-27 class list and no PIAA 2026-27 weight-control manual during research.
• Illinois (IHSA). We could not open the IHSA's terms and conditions for either season and print no Illinois table. The same applies to Michigan (MHSAA) and every state not named in the state table: we did not read their documents.
• Florida and New York for 2026-27. The Florida and New York figures here are from 2025-26 editions, the most recent we found. Growth-allowance dates in particular are restated each season.
• Which female body-fat figure each state is applying. Texas and Iowa print 19 percent for 2026-27. Ohio's and the CIF Southern Section's 2026-27 documents print 12. New York's 2025-26 handbook printed 14. We cannot tell from the documents alone what each state's assessment software is set to. Ask your association.
• Girls' classes in New York. The NYSPHSAA 2025-26 handbook we read lists the fourteen required classes and addresses female weigh-in attire but does not print a separate girls' table.
• The exact first day of eligibility on any descent plan. Our worked scenario uses a linear reading of the 1.5 percent rule. State software counts days in its own way.
• Nothing here is specific to you. Not your assessment, your state's current document, or your health.

Sources

Sourced to

1. Separate Weight Classes for Girls, Choice of Weight Classes Established in High School Wrestling — National Federation of State High School Associations, 3 May 2021; 12, 13 and 14-class boys' and girls' lists effective 1 July 2023
2. Adjustment in Minimum Body Fat Percentage for Females Highlights High School Wrestling Rules Changes — NFHS news release, 17 April 2026, as hosted by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association
3. 2020-21 High School Wrestling Rules Changes Address Weigh-In Procedures, Hair Length Restrictions — National Federation of State High School Associations, 28 April 2020
4. Rules in Place to Guard Against Weight Cutting in Wrestling — National Federation of State High School Associations, 5 October 2022
5. Wrestling Manual — Regular Season — University Interscholastic League, Texas, 2026-27 season page; weight classes and growth allowance
6. Wrestling Minimum Weight Certification Program Information — University Interscholastic League, Texas; rule 1-5-1 components, 19 percent female floor, 2 percent variance
7. Sports Regulations: Wrestling 2026-2027 — Ohio High School Athletic Association, 2026-27; high school, freshman and 7th–8th grade classes
8. Article 340 Wrestling, 2026-27 Blue Book — CIF Southern Section, July 2026; CIF state weight classes and weight management program
9. 2025-26 PIAA Wrestling Weight Control Program Manual — Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, 2025-26
10. PIAA District II 2025-26 Wrestling Handbook — PIAA District II, 2025-26; junior high and middle school weight classifications
11. 2026 PIAA Individual State Wrestling Championships Schedule and Brackets — FloWrestling, 2026; boys' and girls' championship weight classes
12. NYSPHSAA Wrestling Program Handbook 2025-26 — New York State Public High School Athletic Association, 2025-26, as hosted by Section III
13. Wrestling Sport Manual, 2025-26 Edition — Florida High School Athletic Association, revised 2025
14. Body Composition Assessment Program for High School Wrestlers, 2026-27 — Iowa High School Athletic Association, July 2026; information packet for assessors
15. Wrestling Weigh-In Q and A — Georgia High School Association; application of NFHS Rule 4-5
16. Hyperthermia and dehydration-related deaths associated with intentional rapid weight loss in three collegiate wrestlers — North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan, November–December 1997 — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 1998;47(6):105–108, PMID 9480411
17. Fat-Free Mass Is Positively Associated With Urine Specific Gravity in Athletes and Active Adults: A Quantitative Review — Wilson PB, Winter IP, Translational Sports Medicine, 2024;2024:8827027. DOI 10.1155/tsm2/8827027, PMID 39686918

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