Texas Wrestling 2026-27: By the Numbers

Third in our state-by-state preview series: Texas, where the only thing bigger than the brackets is the state itself. Last season MatMetrics ingested 168,333 matches from 1,404 Texas events involving 27,461 wrestlers — up sharply from 130,858 matches and 24,849 wrestlers the year before. Only a handful of states put more bodies on the mat, and none are growing off a bigger base. One structural quirk to know going in: the UIL sanctions wrestling at just two classifications, 5A and 6A, so Texas's smaller schools that field the sport play up into the 5A bracket rather than wrestling their own class.

Girls wrestling drove a chunk of that growth: 7,789 Texas girls competed last season, up from 6,672 — a 17 percent jump in a single year. And the top of the girls rankings is genuinely national-class. El Paso Eastwood's Hailey Delgado enters the season ranked No. 2 in the country at 120 pounds in our rankings, carrying a 2572 rating on a 61-1 record. At 140, Conroe Woodlands College Park's Landri Von Gonten is the top-ranked girl in the state and one of the best in the nation. Belton's Sydney Stifter brings the volume — a 234-20 career in our records at 125, one of the highest match counts of any girl in Texas.

The boys side has its own national headliners. Humble's Sean Perez is ranked No. 2 in the country at 190 pounds (2475 rating, 121-8), a rare big-weight Texan at the very top of a national board. Allen's Oliver Pulliam is right there with him at 126 — No. 4 nationally, 55-3, 2516 — and he is not the only Allen name you'll see: Cayden Rios (132, 150-28) gives the Eagles a second nationally ranked boy, part of a room that is as deep as any in the state. League City Clear Creek's Jared Remington is the iron man of the group at 215, a 184-6 record that speaks to both dominance and a punishing schedule.

The team races split cleanly by class. In 5A boys, Azle is the team to beat — a perfect 25-0 in rated duals last season and the top 5A power rating in the state — with Benbrook and Aledo chasing. In 6A boys, Rockwall Heath tops our power rankings ahead of Klein Oak and Cibolo Steele. On the girls side, Borger leads 5A and Bridgeland edges Katy at the top of 6A, though Katy's 33-8 dual season is the busiest of any ranked girls room in the state. Allen, predictably, shows up on both sides of the ledger.

What to watch when the season opens: whether Perez and Delgado can both close as national finalists — Texas rarely has two wrestlers that high on opposite-gender national boards at once — and whether anyone in 5A can hand Azle its first dual loss in two seasons. Keep an eye on the El Paso and Houston metro pipelines too; between Delgado, Perez, and the Allen contingent out of the Metroplex, the state's three biggest population centers are all producing top-50 talent at the same time.

The usual honest caveat, and it matters more in a state this size: a wrestler who competes under both a club and a school registration can show up under more than one profile, and Texas — with its heavy club scene — is where that happens most. We merged tens of thousands of duplicates in the offseason, but a few of the biggest names still carry a split record between their school and club entries. The underlying results are real; if a record looks light or a name appears twice, that is why. And weights listed are where each wrestler last competed — expect some to move by the time the season opens.

Search any Texas wrestler, team, or event above to see where they stand, or pull up the state rankings and sort by weight class. One state a day through the fall — and the series keeps rolling from here.

* Participation figures in this article were revised on October 19, 2026 to a de-duplicated, one-row-per-bout count. An earlier version counted each bout once per wrestler, which roughly doubled the match totals; the season's trends are unchanged.