H.S. GIRLS WRESTLING: Panther Valley’s Banks chasing historic fourth state championship
· Yahoo Sports
It wasn’t too long ago that sanctioned girls’ wrestling in Pennsylvania was just a dream.
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Despite being perhaps the top state nationally for high school wrestling, it wasn’t until 2020, 82 years after boys’ wrestling was an official PIAA-sanctioned sport, that a girls’ team was formed.
The first high school to do so was J.P. McCaskey High School in Lancaster. Less than a decade later, the sport is officially sanctioned by the PIAA, and 265 total high schools in the state have girls’ wrestling teams.
The sport is not only one of the fastest-growing sports in Pennsylvania, but also nationally.
At the forefront of the girls’ wrestling explosion in Pennsylvania is Panther Valley’s Brenda Banks.
Banks enters next week’s state championships in Hershey with a career record of 106-2. She’s also a three-time district champion, a four-time regional champion, and a three-time state champion.
Next week, she will be chasing history at the 2026 PIAA Individual Wrestling Championships at the Giant Center in Hershey.
She’ll look to become just the 15th wrestler in Pennsylvania’s rich 88-years of wrestling history to be a four-time state champion. If successful, Banks would not only be immortal in Pennsylvania wrestling history — she would be a pioneer as the first girls’ wrestler to accomplish the feat.
A mature decision at a young age
While one would think that a wrestler boasting a career record of 106-2 and three-state championships would have extended experience in the sport, that’s far from the case for Banks.
This season is just her fourth, making her accomplishments thus far all the more remarkable.
“I started first, not even knowing that it was an actual sport,” Banks said, recalling her decision to join the wrestling team. “Because I feel like WWE is really popular. I didn’t realize that wrestling was actually a sport that was participated in in high school.”
So that year, Banks joined the wrestling team alongside her friend, Anelia Bennick.
From the jump, it was clear to Panther Valley coach Kris Nalesnik that Banks was gifted, but how good she could be was still a question.
“I knew she was pretty naturally athletically gifted. I wasn’t sure just how good she was going to be, but I knew she was going to be talented,” Nalesnik said. “That first year, we didn’t have a separate girls’ team. So, when we had wrestle-offs for the boys team, she actually won the wrestle-off to be my 215-pounder for the season.”
But despite winning the wrestle-off, it still wasn’t a clear-cut decision that Banks would be the Panthers’ 215-pound starter that season.
Following the wrestle-off, Nalesnik approached Banks and told the then-freshman that she had two options. Either wrestle at 215 pounds on the boys team, or wrestle on the junior high team — where freshmen are eligible — to learn and gain valuable experience. Banks slept on the decision and came back the next day with an answer.
She wanted to gain experience at the junior high level.
“She said, ‘I really was thinking about it, and while I would love to wrestle for the rest of the team, I think the best thing for me to do to learn this sport is to start with the junior high program and build from there,’” Nalesnik recalled.
It was a decision that many freshmen in her shoes may not have made.
“It was a very mature decision,” Nalesnik said. “That showed me that she wasn’t looking for that immediate success; she was looking for the long-term career success.”
Immediate success
It’s safe to say that the decision paid off for Banks both in the immediate and long-term. That freshman season, Banks wrestled in just three matches at the high school level before March, all coming at the Coal Cracker Girls Tournament in Jim Thorpe. After winning her first two matches of the day, she suffered her first career defeat in the finals.
“She didn’t know enough to not choose top,” Nalesnik said about the loss. “She’s a brand new wrestler, and she couldn’t see without her glasses, so when we were trying to tell her to choose bottom, she thought we were telling her to pick top, and so she did.”
She ultimately fell 2-1 to Cumberland Valley’s Aja’nai Jumper.
But after that loss, it was only success for Banks. She finished first at the East Regionals that year at Parkland High School, and one week later, won all four matches, including a rematch against Jumper, to win her first career state championship.
“When she went out there that freshman year and won the state tournament, it was mostly based on physical talent and not as much technique at that point,” Nalesnik said. “Because she’s still kind of a new wrestler, so she relied on her physical gifts that first year.”
But even with a state championship in her first season, Banks didn’t fully recognize her talents on the mat until her second season.
“It hadn’t really sunk in that I was performing pretty well, probably until my second season,” she said, remembering how she didn’t fully grasp the magnitude of her accomplishment of winning states as a freshman.
“A lot of my first season was just getting through the matches to be fit,” she said. “I was used to playing sports, but not something so physically demanding. So I felt like most of the time my head was kind of adding up when I’d be competing.”
After her first state championship, Banks competed in the 2023 US Marine Corps Junior National Wrestling Championships in Fargo, North Dakota. Among the best wrestlers in the country, Banks finished fourth in her 225-pound weight class.
“When I participated in Fargo for the first time, I placed fourth; it didn’t really register in my head what it meant to wrestle for one year —not even the high school season — to start freestyle for the first time and then place fourth at Fargo,” she explained. “It didn’t mean much to me because I didn’t really understand the weight of what I had done.”
“Following into my second year, when I started getting more attention for my wrestling, I think that’s when it really hit me that I had excelled beyond what was considered normal for my time,” she said.
The drive to stay on top
During her sophomore season, Banks not only began to realize the magnitude of her talents, but also fully came into her own on the mat.
“Between that first year and her second year, you really started to see her mature as far as wrestling IQ,” Nalesnik recalled about her development as a sophomore. “She really learned the different intricacies of the sport itself, and from that point on, so her sophomore year all the way through now, there’s very little that I’ve done for her from that point on. I’ll take credit for that first year, but after that, I mean, she’s just driven to be great herself.”
Since the start of her sophomore season, the dominance has only continued for Banks. She’s won 98 matches over the three seasons with just one loss, an injury default. While Banks likely would laugh now about the matter, it was not a loss that she took kindly to at the time.
“What’s funny about that match is, I made the call to pull her out of that match,” Nalesnik said. “She wanted to keep wrestling, even though she couldn’t stand, and that speaks to her determination, but after I pulled her off the match, she wouldn’t talk to me for almost a week, because she was mad at me for not letting her continue to wrestle.”
“She wasn’t mad about the loss; she was mad about how the loss happened,” he noted. “How I made it so that she had no choice but to step off the mat. And I think once she realizes, I’m just protecting her career, and for the end of the tournament, that tournament in mid-December doesn’t mean nearly as much as your state tournament in the end.”
Since that injury default loss, Banks has not only continued to stack up wins, but she’s been untouchable, collecting 61 consecutive victories, including her third state championship along the way.
Despite the few days of anger towards her coach regarding his decision, Banks has always been a professional, Nalesnik noted.
“She is a consummate professional. Win, lose, or draw, it doesn’t matter; she’s going to be a professional about it. That’s just how she is.”
The last two seasons have also been unique for Banks in that she went from survival and hunting for the state championship to being the hunted. Every wrestler she takes on is looking for the slightest point of weakness that could catapult them to an upset victory. It’s a challenge that she has enjoyed.
“I think that the motivation that other wrestlers have to beat me is what fuels my drive,” she said. “Knowing that people want to be there. I understand that to keep my spot, I have to keep working. The grind truly never stops.”
No one has figured Banks out yet, and time is now running out.
A chance at history
While Banks is continuously working to stay on top of her game and at the top of the totem pole, she admittedly hasn’t thought much about the potential history that awaits her.
“I’m the type of wrestler to always think in the present,” she said. “I definitely don’t dwell on my past matches because if you dwell on the past, you can’t change it.What you have is the present and the future, but I like to do what I can about the situation I’m in right now.”
“When I’m wrestling in districts, it’s about winning districts. So when I won districts, then it’s okay, now we’re training for regionals. Now that I won regionals, states are on my mind. Now I have to put in the extra work to be able to win states.”
That ability to say within the present, not basking in prior accomplishments or daydreaming of potential glory to come, has been pivotal in her journey.
For Nalesnik, it’s a special honor to be her coach and the one who has helped guide her throughout this journey.
“Just with the rise of girls wrestling in general, we’ve seen so many talented girls come and go, and to have that opportunity to be a four-time state champion, a lot of other girls may have had that opportunity if it was given to them, but she’s one of the first that actually truly gets it, so to me, that’s very special,” he said.
“Going for that fourth title, I don’t think she puts too much credence into it. I know I put a lot more into it than she does,” he added. “I’m ecstatic to have someone like her to coach. She’s a once-in-a-lifetime talent.”
As discussing Banks’ journey, he couldn’t help but think how far girls’ wrestling has come over the last few years.
“I love seeing how girls’ wrestling has just improved; the numbers have skyrocketed,” he said. “Just in our district alone, we had about 300 girls total in the district, and it’s just an unbelievable feat when you think about where we are now.”
In the past two seasons, Banks has not been the only Panther who has made it to the state tournament. Teammate Alisa Williams, a standout in the 170-pound weight class, finished fourth in regionals last week and will now compete in the state tournament for the second time. Both wrestlers have made a huge impact, not just on the Panther Valley program, but on the community as a whole, an impact that they likely don’t fully understand currently, either.
“They don’t understand how pivotal they’ve been in bringing girls wrestling to this area and making it so prevalent,” Nalesnik said. “You know, they’re not just wrestlers at this point. They are local celebrities, and it really is a beautiful thing to see. They don’t realize how much they’ve actually done.”
Fans interested in attending next week’s state championships can buy tickets online through the PIAA website and Ticketmaster. Tickets for the preliminaries and first round matchups, as well as the quarterfinals, are $12 per session. The third, fourth, and fifth place matches, as well as the semifinals and finals, are $14 each. There are also purchasing options to buy for all five sessions across March 5-7 for $56 each, plus a $2 fee per ticket.