MOUNT VERNON — Get ready, because some of the best female wrestlers, in and out of the state of Ohio, will soon be converging in Mount Vernon.

Saturday at 10 a.m., Pleasant Street Elementary School will play host to the USGWA Ohio State Girls Open Wrestling Tournament.

The Mount Vernon team will be coached by John Brown and Mike Oswalt, who also coach the wrestling team at Mount Vernon High School. The team will include all age groups.

Among the notables who will attend are Renay Bakley (USGWA ranked 12th at 134 pounds) and her teammate, Lindsay Curry, both of whom are fresh from competing at the Arnold Classic last weekend in Columbus.

Mount Vernon has played host to this event every year since its inception.

“This is our eighth year,” said Oswalt. “We were the first state tournament other than up in Michigan — where it was founded by (USGWA Director) Kent Bailo, who contacted John (Brown) — and we were actually the second ones to have a state tournament. We started out with 40 to 50 girls and we are hoping to hit the 120 mark this year.”

“When they first had the nationals, we had some girls around who had done some wrestling,” Brown said, “so I said, ‘Let’s send them up (to Michigan) and see how they do.’ We sent 10 or 12 girls to the first national tournament. One girl placed — Heidi Lybarger. The guy (Bailo) got hold of me the next year and said, ‘Let’s start having state tournaments. Do you want to hold it?’ and I said, ‘We’ll hold it,’ and we have held it ever since.”

Now, the USGWA sponsors 42 state tournaments across the United States.

Currently, the Ohio High School Athletic Association does not sponsor girls wrestling. Girls are allowed in Ohio, as in many states, to wrestle against the boys.

Only Texas and California have sanctioned girls high school wrestling. This year, a girl, Michaela Hutchison, won the Alaska state tournament, wrestling against boys. This marks the first time any girl has ever placed first in a state wrestling tournament.

Progress in girl’s wrestling has been slow, and there is still a long way to go.

“The one thing that slows this sport down in comparison to others is the physical contact and aggressiveness,” said Oswalt. “It’s not like basketball, that has a lot of technique. This is hands-on, physical toughness, and there’s not as many girls that are that interested in that type of sport. But the more it is catching on, the more girls are converting from cheerleading and gymnastics, they are adapting and doing quite well.”

Title Nine, college scholarship opportunities and Olympic recognition are great. It may, however, take a few more athletes like Hutchison to sanction girls wrestling in high schools nationwide.

Oswalt’s daughter, Vanessa, is an Olympic wrestling hopeful, but the road there has not been easy.

“With the girls’ wrestling, we had no idea at all that there was anything out there,” said Oswalt, who heard from the parents of a young wrestler who told him about the Saunders Open Tournament in Michigan. “We said, ‘Let’s take her up here and see what she can do,’ from there, that kind of opened the doors. We met some of the wrestlers and they gave us contacts.”

From there, Vanessa started going to tournaments and started wrestling in the middle school.

As for any Saturday tournament predictions, Oswalt hesitates, saying, “We have a lot of girls from in state that are on the border line that can really do well. As far as out-of-state girls, it’s really a toss-up — we don’t know who that could be.”