On March 9, when Life University graduate student Jamilah McBryde won her first National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) women's wrestling title, no one was surprised — but the dominance with which she won did turn some heads. She went into the tournament as the number one seed in her 143-pound weight class, outscoring opponents 31-0 en route to her finals match against Emma Walker of Campbellsville University. Jamilah then put up another shutout: She won 10-0.
“It was just taking one thing at a time, one point, not getting too far ahead of myself…. Just trying to stay present and in the moment,” Jamilah said in a post-finals match interview. “It was really just pressure, pace, patience, and position for the whole tournament that I was trying to focus on.”
Even before Jamilah's dominating title win, she and her sisters, Zaynah and Latifah, had taken the rapidly growing women’s wrestling world by storm. The trio made the NAIA finals, but Jamilah’s title came with a special opportunity: It qualified her for the United States Olympic team trials, held on April 19 and 20, in State College, Pennsylvania.
After her national title match, Jamilah thanked God and her sisters; she had accomplished getting a shot at an Olympic dream, a once in a lifetime opportunity for most. Jamilah's mood, though, was largely somber and reserved. She had no expectation of actually getting a chance to compete for a spot on Team USA.
Jamilah, like her sisters, competes in hijab, the religious head covering worn traditionally by women of Muslim faith, and covers her arms and legs. Modifications to her head covering and uniform to comply with her faith would ultimately bar her from competing at the Olympics.
The McBryde sisters are among several devout Muslims in the sport who compete in a uniform that covers the entire body. But United World Wrestling (UWW), the sport’s governing body, announced on April 17 that the sisters' modified uniform is unacceptable in international competition, excluding Jamilah from her shot at the Olympics because, the organization claims, the uniform provides the McBryde sisters with an unfair advantage over opponents.
The McBryde sisters beg to differ. They have been wrestling in hijab since they were young children in Buffalo, New York. Their father, Mustafah, was a high school and collegiate wrestler at the University of Buffalo. At a time when women's wrestling was still uncommon, most women who wrestled had to train and compete with men up to the Olympic and world-class level. Given the McBryde family's faith, that was unacceptable; physical contact between a man and woman is prohibited outside of the family. So the McBryde sisters just wrestled together.
“I found there was this prevailing thought that, in order for girls to be any good, they had to grapple or wrestle with guys,” says Mustafah. “And I was like, ‘Well, that's stupid, right?’”
Though the McBryde sisters didn’t compete at school like other young athletes might have, wrestling bred a competitive nature within them from an early age. “It could get a little heated,” Latifah recalls. “I'd get beat up by Jamilah, and then I'd beat up Zaynah, but then we’d both be beat up by Jamilah.”
Though women’s wrestling was not common when the McBryde sisters were growing up, it is now. As interest has skyrocketed, 45 states have sanctioned women’s wrestling as an official high school sport. According to the National Wrestling Coaches Association, the number of women who wrestle in high school has grown from 804 in 1994 to more than 50,000 in 2023.
The collegiate level is now following suit. The University of Iowa, one of Division I NCAA wrestling’s most dominant and historic programs, added a women's team in 2023, and the NCAA has declared that its first women's wrestling championship will be held in 2026.
“It's just been immense — I think that’s probably the best word,” says Ashley Flavin, head coach of Life University and the McBryde sisters, referring to the growth of women's wrestling. "The talent pool is so high and their skill set is so strong because now they have access to wrestling at the grassroots level, which is something I never had, and something most female wrestlers didn't have until the last, probably, 10 years.”
That growth in participation presented the McBryde sisters with a real opportunity to compete against women in a manner that complemented their faith. After obtaining special permission from USA Wrestling to compete in a modified uniform that featured a dry-fit shirt, loose-fitting sweats, and a hijab with a wrestling singlet underneath, the trio competed for two straight years at the World Team trials, rattling off win after win, seemingly out of nowhere. The three sisters — who, in their entire lives, had competed in only one local tournament up to that point — began beating some of the biggest young names in the sport.
“They really took the world kind of by storm," Flavin says, "because it was completely unexpected for them not just to be there, but to, as the saying goes, show up and show out.”
In 2022, at the sisters' second World Team trials, Latifah made the United States Pan American team, which also marked the first time the McBryde sisters’ hijabs became an issue. Just minutes after she stood on the podium, Latifah was informed that she would not be able to compete for Team USA.
“After we went to go get medals and everything, the organizers came up to me and said, ‘Well, UWW wants to have a conversation. We don't know if you're going to be allowed to go,’” Latifah recalls. “No reasoning on why they even let us compete in 2021 or 2022, and then why, all of a sudden, that we actually did something… we're not allowed to compete.”
According to the McBrydes, they competed in 48 matches before being recruited to wrestle at Life University, all with the express permission of USA Wrestling — prior to being told, at the end of the 2022 season, that their modified uniform was illegal.
In correspondence that dates back to 2022, UWW wrote to Team USA and the McBrydes that proper testing of the advantages and disadvantages of the sisters' uniform could not be completed in time for the Pan American games.
United World Wrestling has long maintained stringent policies on uniforms, down to the color of singlets. In a sport that is as up close and personal as wrestling, limiting the potential for fabric to interfere with grappling is considered paramount. This has led to multiple incidents in which scholastic and Olympic wrestling has struggled with accommodating diverse hair, body, and clothing styles.
Jamilah’s brother, Muhamed, lost time for NCAA eligibility while wrestling at the University of Buffalo because he refused to shave his beard, defying an NCAA rule that requires all wrestlers be clean shaven — a rule the NCAA removed just two years later. In 2019, New Jersey high school wrestler Andrew Johnson was forced to cut off his dreadlocks or forfeit a match in a viral video that made national news.
Says Afsoon Johnston, the first woman to win a world medal in wrestling, in 1989, for the United States, “I think we need to work with UWW in helping them realize and [make] changes to the current uniform so that it opens up opportunities for all girls and women from all backgrounds and religions all over the world.” Johnston competed on high school and Division I NCAA men's teams after fleeing her home nation of Iran due to the Islamic Revolution. She also coached the women’s freestyle team during the Rio games, where the US team won its first gold medal.
Johnston has personally experienced the stern nature of wrestling’s long-held regulations on hair and uniforms. In her first high school match, the referee decided her hair was too long and forced her to cut it. Although she supports a modification of the uniform that would permit hijab, Johnston feels the regulations the McBryde’s are seeking, which would also permit looser-fitting clothing, are going too far. “At what point do you go, ‘Okay, this is the sport of freestyle wrestling. We've made accommodations. We've made compromises,'" Johnston says. "'But you [the McBrydes] have to also make compromises.’”
Rather than enable women in hijab and other modest uniforms to compete in a wider world championship, UWW has opted to introduce “classic style” wrestling for use in predominantly Muslim countries, like Iran, featuring similar rules to women's freestyle wrestling that allow for a modified, more modest uniform. However, while this is an available option, there’s little to no competition in countries that aren’t predominantly Muslim.
Since Latifah first bumped up against the uniform rules, the McBryde sisters have competed in dozens of matches, each wearing their modified uniform at Life University. The McBrydes and their coaches argue that the uniform gives them no advantage; actually, they believe it does the opposite. In a sport as physical as wrestling, every piece of extra cloth, anything that might get twisted up in the contorting of bodies, can be a liability.
“A couple months ago, I had a girl grab my hijab. I shot a single and I was in on her leg, and she grabbed the back of my head, and grabbed my hijab, and started smashing my face into the floor while grabbing my hijab,” Zaynah says. “So it was just like, ‘Where's the advantage?’ There's pictures and evidence of girls grabbing our uniform, of us trying to go into something and then, like, [they] pull on fistfuls of our shirt.”
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Jamilah agrees: “It's not like it changes the sport. It's not like…you can't [do a certain move] on me because I'm wearing pants. It's not like you can't throw me on my head. Everything still works, and it doesn't change the score at all.”
Coach Flavin insists that the vast majority of responses from members of the women’s wrestling community have been overwhelmingly positive, both on and off the mat. “We've had times that all three girls, their hijab has slipped and their competitors stop wrestling to help cover them,” Flavin says. “I think it's just that camaraderie of female athletes, that we all understand the fights each other have had to go through.”
The McBrydes say they have made extensive modifications to their uniform, including getting custom-designed pants and adding Velcro that secures their top to their shorts to prevent the uniform from becoming untucked.
Nonetheless, United World Wrestling hasn’t made an exception and, more than two years after Latifah’s omission from the US Pan American team, UWW and USA Wrestling ruled that Jamilah is also ineligible for the Olympic trials.
In a statement on April 17, two days before Jamilah was supposed to compete for her spot on the US Olympic team, UWW informed the McBrydes and USA Wrestling that a “test event” of the sisters' modified uniform had been held in Turkey, in June 2023, with just three participants, all employees of UWW, and without informing or allowing input from USA Wrestling or the McBryde family.
The UWW statement read: “The findings of this study revealed that both wrestlers faced unequal opportunities to fully execute their techniques and tactics, whether in offensive or defensive maneuvers. Consequently, this created an unbalanced and unjust competitive environment.”
In communication with the McBryde family and USA Wrestling, and in multiple requests for comment from Teen Vogue, UWW declined to elaborate on the nature of the study conducted, why it was conducted without notifying anyone, and on the study’s findings. The McBrydes tried to appeal the decision, but to no avail.
United World Wrestling has also declined to clarify the advantages and disadvantages presented by the McBryde sisters' uniform, but a source connected to UWW says the governing body is primarily concerned with potential for finger injuries to opponents and the effect of the sisters' multilayered uniform on an opponent's ability to grip.
This is just the latest in a long string of struggles for hijab-wearing athletes. Another American wrestler, Zainab Ibrahim, was denied entry to the 2023 women’s World Team trials. In 2011, American Pakistani weightlifter Kulsoom Abdullah engaged in a protracted legal fight with the International Weightlifting Federation to be allowed to compete in hijab. To date, only one American has competed in hijab for Team USA at the Olympics: bronze-medalist fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, in 2016.
For the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris, hijab has also been a contentious issue, with France banning its own athletes from wearing the religious head covering. “What's the prevailing thought about Muslim women? ‘Oh, you poor women, you're oppressed,’” says Mustafah McBryde. “Okay, well, I got these three chicks here who are, in some ways, showing you there's no oppression happening here. You, the ones who claim that we are oppressed, are oppressing us…. by not allowing these women to remain covered.”
United World Wrestling declined requests for an interview, but the group's head of communications, Eric Olanowski, said in a text exchange that “wrestling has exploded in predominantly Muslim nations, with each women wrestler adhering to the standard uniform without issue.”
In a statement to Teen Vogue, USA Wrestling says it "is proud of the achievements of Jamilah McBryde, who has been a member of our organization for many years,” adding that “as this is a qualifying event for the Olympic Games Paris 2024, the event is required to follow the UWW rules.” USA wrestling declined requests for an interview and for further comment.
In a statement from the Council for Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group working with the McBryde family, the organization says the US Olympic Committee should be “ashamed to use images of Muslim hijabi athletes as tokens of diversity and to pretend to be inclusive when they refused Jamilah McBryde the opportunity to even participate in US Olympic trials.” CAIR is “investigating to determine whether the US Olympic Committee is in violation of the US Constitution that guarantees civil rights to all Americans and does not allow discrimination on the basis of religion.”
With Jamilah’s Olympic hopes for 2024 gone, her family has turned an eye to the future. “Obviously, Olympics, world championships, and [other competitions], but my goal has become more to do it alongside [my sisters],” Latifah says about wanting to succeed in competitions as a family. “My goal right now is to be the first group of hijabi sisters to do it. And then, hopefully, if it doesn't get changed for us, my next goal would be to change it for our daughters or any other little Muslim girls who want to come up and try to do it.”
On the other hand, Jamilah’s road map for the future is a little simpler: “Dominate,” she says.
