“I was doing a youth camp and he asked me if I would come back and do a three-hour session with 11 girls that had no experience in the sport,” said Turnquist, who will be a senior this season at NSU and is an NCAA Division II national qualifier. 

Turnquist kept it light, he kept it fun and concentrated on wrestling fundamentals and positioning for those three hours. 

And he liked what he saw.

“It was probably one of the best camps I’ve ever done,” he said. “Girls listen more, they seem older and more mature and with absolute beginners, they don't have any bad habits to break.” 

Several weeks ago 605 Sports caught up with Spearfish All-American Taylor Fierbach-Graveman and her experience of seeing wrestling become a sanctioned sport and the explosive growth her sport is seeing. 

“When South Dakota sanctioned girls wrestling two years ago I was happy because it just reassured every little girl's dream that if they wanted something they could go out and work for it,” Fierbach-Graveman said in July. “It is cool to watch the numbers grow and to see where girls don’t have to wrestle boys and girls don’t have to worry about boys accepting them.” 

Fierbach-Graveman, along with a number of other South Dakota girls will be competing in the first-ever, Wrestle Like a Girl Classic on Aug. 5-6 in Coralville, Iowa.