Arkansas Wrestling 2026-27: By the Numbers

We are opening our state-by-state preview series at home. Arkansas wrestling is young by national standards — the sport was only sanctioned here in 2008 — but the database says it has settled into something real: 52,361 matches across 222 events last season, with 5,130 wrestlers taking the mat. That is a slightly leaner slate than the year before (about 56,000 matches), but the story underneath is not shrinkage; it is consolidation, with the serious rooms getting deeper while casual entries thin out.

The number that should get the most attention: 1,555 of last season's Arkansas wrestlers were girls — roughly 30 percent of the state's active wrestlers. For comparison, the national share in our database is closer to a quarter. Arkansas sanctioned girls wrestling only a few years ago, and it is already producing nationally ranked wrestlers at multiple weights, concentrated in a handful of programs that committed early: Rogers, Harrisburg, Conway, and Cabot account for a remarkable share of the state's top-rated girls.

Nowhere is that clearer than at girls 130 pounds, which is set up to be the best weight class in the state regardless of gender. Harrisburg's Regina Stoeser (40-2, 2288 rating), Rogers' Anna Dux (a 232-22 career in our records, 2275), and Lake Hamilton's Raylee Hunter (129-6, 2272) sit within sixteen rating points of each other — all three ranked in the national top 50. A three-way race that tight, between three different schools in three different corners of the state, is the kind of thing the February state series exists for.

On the boys side, the top of the state runs through two rooms. Sheridan returns a trio of nationally ranked wrestlers in Maddox Laymon (138), Keegan Rager (165, 184-10 in our records), and Braxten Crow (175). Harrisburg answers with Landon Hill at 126 and Brody Buzzard at 215 — and the state's highest-rated boy overall is Bentonville's Zach Donalson at 120, ranked in the national top 50 with a 152-4 record. Beebe's Shade Harrell deserves a line of his own: 231 wins in our database at 126 pounds, one of the highest match counts of any active wrestler in the state.

Bentonville enters as the defending 6A dual state champion after handling Rogers 59-16 in last season's final — a title with an asterisk the Tigers didn't ask for, since a winter storm kept the Central Arkansas schools, Cabot included, from making the trip to a four-team field. Our schedule-based power rating actually likes Cabot, whose room spent January testing itself against Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee competition. The two never met last season — their lone common dual opponent was Bentonville West, whom both handled — which makes their first 2026-27 collision the most anticipated dual on the Arkansas calendar. Lake Hamilton and Harrisburg top their classes in our power rankings, and on the girls side Rogers enters as the team to beat with Searcy right behind. One scheduling note: the AAA's new 2026-28 classification cycle takes effect this season, so some schools will be chasing titles in new classes.

The honest caveat we attach to every data piece: a wrestler who competes under both a club and a school registration can still show up under more than one profile, and smaller-school results in Arkansas are exactly where that happens most. We merged tens of thousands of duplicates in the offseason and the records above are the cleanest we have ever published — but if a name or record looks off, that is usually the reason, and the report tools on every profile come straight to us. One more: weights listed are where each wrestler last competed — expect some to move up a class by the time the season opens.

Search any Arkansas wrestler, team, or event above to see where they stand heading into the winter, or pull up the state rankings and sort by weight. The series continues tomorrow with Oklahoma — and then one state a day through the fall.