Delaware State announced last November that women’s wrestling was added to its athletics program. Last month Kenya Sloan was announced as the program’s first head coach.
“I was the assistant coach at Sacred Heart University, which is one of only six Division I women’s wrestling programs in the country,” said Sloan in a recent MSR phone interview. “What’s so neat about our sport right now is it’s growing so fast. I’m pretty sure at the high school level, women’s wrestling is the fastest growing sport in the U.S.”
Overall, there are nearly 150 women’s wrestling programs across the three NCAA divisions, NAIA and NJCAA, and eight DI wrestling clubs. Over 1,200 women are competing in college.
The Knoxville native was Tennessee’s first four-time female high school wrestling champion (87-0), the nation’s top wrestler in her weight class (180 pounds). Sloan then went on to wrestle in college at Campbellsville (Ky.) University, where she was a team captain and two-time NAIA All-American and won the 2022 NAIA National Championship as a 155-pounder.
She earned her degree in exercise science and educational ministries, and later her certification as a strength therapist and physical therapy technician. But Sloan quickly pointed out that she didn’t see herself as a coach.
“Even from the time I was young,” she recalled, “I didn’t know what I thought I would do. Even going into college, I thought I would go into business. My father works in business, and I always looked up to him in his career.
“I was double majoring in business administration and then educational ministries. [Then] I had an injury in college that made me kind of reassess my options,” Sloan pointed out. “I ended up doing a lot of physical therapy, and I fell in love with the physical rehabilitation process, so I changed my major to exercise science. When I graduated, I took a year off.
“I actually applied to physical therapy school, made my deposit, and moved back home to Tennessee,” she continued. “I was ready to go to school when I got this phone call about the assistant coaching job at Sacred Heart.”
After a year as assistant coach, Sloan now leads her own program.
“If I’m being honest, I haven’t even seen it as a challenge for me” as a first-time head coach. “I know I had to keep my eyes and my ears open… I wanted to make sure [her first HC job] would be the perfect job for me, so I wasn’t in a hurry.
“I loved coaching there,” she said of her time at Sacred Heart, “and it was a great first coaching experience. When I saw this program at Delaware State, I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be one of the first women’s wrestling coaches at an HBCU. Getting the opportunity to be a part of this was something that I knew I couldn’t pass up.”
Once again, Sloan is making history, this time as a Black female head wrestling coach.
“I want to make sure that I extend my gratitude to Delaware State University administration for seeing me fit for this position,” said Sloan. “I also want to express my gratitude to HBCU Wrestling. They made a huge donation to launch this program.”
The new Hornets head coach said she can’t wait to get her program off and running, building a foundation of success. Building a winning program from scratch, surmised Sloan, “ranks really high” on her legacy resume.
“I never would have thought that my career would evolve into this. Of course I wanted to make my family proud, and I’m still doing so in this position. I think it’ll sink in the first time I have all of my student-athletes in place, our first team meeting together.”
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.