New York Wrestling 2026-27: By the Numbers

Sixteenth in our state-by-state preview series: New York, the state with the most complicated — and maybe most interesting — championship structure in the country. The NYSPHSAA's roughly 768 public schools wrestle across eleven numbered Sections in two enrollment divisions, but the individual state championships at Albany's MVP Arena are a true all-state affair: New York City's PSAL, the Catholic CHSAA, and the independent schools all send their champions into the same brackets, something almost no other state does. There are two separate team titles too — a 24-team Dual Meet Championship in Syracuse in January, and the team points race decided at the individual tournament in February. Last season MatMetrics ingested 185,069 matches from 3,146 New York events involving 35,486 wrestlers. Girls were about 17% of the field, but that share is moving fast: girls participation in our data jumped nearly 21% year over year, in a state that only held its first girls invitational in January 2023 and its first official girls championship in 2025 — wrestled, uniquely, under international freestyle rules.

The team hardware went in three directions in 2026. At the January duals in Syracuse, Massapequa beat Shenendehowa 42-21 for the Division I title — its first since 2019, after edging defending champion Minisink Valley by a single point in the semifinal — while Miller Place beat Suffolk rival Shoreham-Wading River 45-24 in an all-Long Island Division II final for the first state championship in program history. Then at Albany in February, St. Francis of Buffalo — a Catholic school — repeated as the Division I team points champion ahead of runner-up Minisink Valley, the kind of result that keeps the all-comers format a running debate; Tioga reclaimed the Division II crown it had held five straight years through 2024. And on the girls side, Shenendehowa won its first team title, 102-81 over Bellport.

The boys storyline is Gavin Mangano's run at history. The Shoreham-Wading River senior is the No. 1-ranked 138-pounder in the country, a Penn State commit who opened his season by beating a nationally ranked opponent at Who's Number One in September — and he's a three-time state champion chasing a fourth, something only a handful of New York boys have ever done. Right behind him is Bellport junior Camryn Howard, ranked No. 2 in the country after a 48-0 season, a second state title, and a Fargo freestyle national championship this summer. The youth is startling: Westlake's Marcarlo Mannello won the Division I 103 title as an eighth grader — at 13, the youngest Division I champion in state history — and went 40-0 without surrendering a takedown. Tioga's Declan McKee returns a two-time champion, North Babylon's Xavier Seabury won at 110 after beating two-time champion Will Soto of Newburgh in overtime — both return — and Minisink Valley's Wyatt Boice (35-0 at 175), Massapequa's Jake Nieto (44-1 at 138), Cobleskill-Richmondville's Ashten Haley, and Deposit-Hancock's Landyn Shaffer, a Fargo runner-up and Binghamton commit, fill out a deep returning class.

The girls side returns both of New York's Fargo headliners. Shenendehowa junior Ava Guilmette — a two-time state champion at two different weights — won a Fargo 16U national freestyle title at 155 this summer, anchoring the program that just won the first girls team championship in school history. Shaker sophomore Ava Gregg is the state's highest-ranked returning girl, No. 2 in the country at 207. Behind them: Sidney's Isabella Phelps (45-1, a champion at 114), Dundee's Peyton Mullin — a three-time Fargo All-American at 235 — Minisink Valley's Sara Pauls, Chautauqua Lake's Noli Paddock (a Fargo 16U runner-up), Tioga's Amelia Toomey, and Eastchester's Tatiana Alexander, all returning champions or finalists. The growth curve underneath them is the real story: New York added girls teams at a pace that nearly doubled the field since 2023, and the NYSPHSAA just approved a girls dual meet championship starting in 2027-28.

Looking ahead, the winter runs through Albany again — MVP Arena hosts through 2028, with the girls championships February 25 and the boys February 26-27, after the Syracuse duals on January 30. The subplots: whether a public program can take the team race back from St. Francis, whether Massapequa and Miller Place can hold their dual titles against Minisink Valley and a Shoreham-Wading River team wrestling for revenge, and a quieter one — the prep-school drain. New York Military Academy pulled in two reigning state champions (Norwich's three-time champion Maverick Beckwith, now an Army commit, and Coxsackie-Athens' Ryker Cox) plus girls finalist Gigi Sullivan, and 2026 girls champion Delaney Dixon left for Wyoming Seminary in Pennsylvania — all of them out of the NYSPHSAA pool this winter.

The honest caveat, and New York's was a two-parter. First, geography: the top heavyweight on our raw New York board was actually Kansas's Noah Mathis — his school, Lansing, carried a New York state tag in our database (there's a Lansing in the Finger Lakes; his is in Leavenworth County) — fixed this week, the second wrong-state school we've caught this month. Second, gender: five verified boys state champions or All-Americans were sitting in our girls rankings — including a three-time champion and the reigning 138-pound Division II champion — all now locked to the correct gender, along with a tangle of duplicate profiles in the Mannello family we canonical-linked. A college program from North Dakota was also leaking into the state filter. As always: weights listed are last-competed and wrestlers often move up a class, and career records on our site aggregate club and offseason matches, so they run higher than official single-season marks.

Search any New York wrestler, team, or event above to see where they stand heading into the winter, or pull up the state rankings and sort by weight class. One state a day — the series rolls on.