Breaking the hold

One of the top women wrestlers in the country, she is a four-time New England Prep and three-time National Prep champion. Her senior year at PA, she was ranked number two in the country in her weight class.

Despite Nugent’s stellar résumé, she wasn’t locked in to make the World Championship team. At the April 2025 U20 National Championships, which served as the trials for the World team, Nugent stunned the competition by pinning all five of her opponents, earning the national crown and securing her place as a World Team member. The previous two years, she hadn’t placed at Nationals.

“No one expected Dani to place at the tournament. Not only did she podium, but she won,” recalls Kassie (Archambault) Bateman ’06, head wrestling coach and Russian department chair, who coached Nugent during her four years at Andover. “Knowing that the odds are stacked against you and then to prove everyone wrong—it’s huge.”

Ever since the World Championships, Nugent has been hungry. Hungry to medal and to keep pushing to be the best she can be in a sport that hasn’t always welcomed young women. But she isn’t interested in just winning. She’s also determined to help expand opportunities for the next generation of women wrestlers, especially at the collegiate level.

Girls’ wrestling is the fastest-growing high school sport in the country, and at the collegiate level, women's wrestling is gaining ground rapidly. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, participation in girls’ wrestling jumped 15 percent from 2023–24 to 2024–25, topping 74,000 participants for the first time. The sport is sanctioned in 46 states, and nearly 1,000 schools added a girls’ wrestling program last year.

This year, the National Collegiate Athletic Association officially recognized women’s wrestling as the 91st championship sport—and will hold the first championship in March 2026.

“There are so many girls wrestling in high school, but there aren’t as many options at the college level—program-wise or scholarship-wise—even if you’re top ranked in the country,” Nugent says. “It made senior year really hard, honestly, because everyone else was committing [as athletes to colleges] and asking me why I hadn’t committed yet.”

While women’s wrestling isn’t a varsity sport at Oklahoma State University (OSU), Nugent chose the school for its storied wrestling tradition, coaches, facilities, and thriving club program. Club sports are one way to build momentum by demonstrating that women at Division I (D1) schools are interested and qualified. The Cowgirls Wrestling Club has a full roster and is aiming to achieve D1 status in the near future.

“Women deserve to have the same opportunities as men—they deserve to be in D1 schools with the kind of curriculum and opportunities that D1 schools provide,” says Kyra Barry ’83, who served as team leader for the 2016 USA Wrestling women’s team. “Dani is going to break barriers in new ways. There will be a huge wake trailing her as she moves forward.”

OSU’s Cowgirls Wrestling Club is also Nugent’s first all-girls team.

Nugent is the youngest of five, having trailed her older siblings into the sport. Initially, just her brothers wrestled because her father, who grappled at Boston College, didn’t know that girls could wrestle. He’d never seen a girl on the mat before. But when her older sister saw a girl competing at a tournament, she told her father—and within a week Nugent and her two sisters were signed up to wrestle too.

Competing as a kid, Nugent and her sisters were often the only girls at youth tournaments, but they weren’t fazed by it. Things began to change in middle school when Nugent competed on the boys’ team.

For high school, Nugent followed her sister Marisol ’20 and brother Colin ’23 to PA, where she found a wrestling team and culture that helped her flourish. Girls have been welcomed on the Academy’s wrestling team since the early 1990s, when it became an all-gender sport.

“Andover is probably the healthiest place for wrestling,” Nugent says. “Everyone is super respectful and supportive of one another.”

Bateman agrees. “The camaraderie forges a bond like no other. It’s one of those sports where you start in high school and grow.”

But Nugent’s high school wrestling career was marked by injuries that kept her off the mat and unable to place at national tournaments. Her lower year, she tore her meniscus and was out for eight months. She tore it again her upper year.

“Those injuries held back her confidence a little bit. Now, we’re just starting to see her grow into her confidence. She’s got untapped potential,” Bateman adds.

As a senior, Nugent had a Cinderella year. She was team captain, won the Beast of the East tournament, became the first female wrestler to win New England preps four times, became a three-time National Prep Champion, and won her first national title.

“Dani has always been tough, and she grew so much in her mental toughness. That’s a huge reason why she saw the big successes of her senior year,” Bateman says.

The wrestling room at Oklahoma State is neon orange—a stark change from PA blue—and Nugent confides that when she walks in, sometimes she has to blink a few times so her eyes can adjust. But it’s becoming a second home.

Throughout the winter, she’ll train and compete in tournaments and meets in the run-up to women’s collegiate club wrestling nationals in early 2026. But she is laser-focused on USA Wrestling National Championships and World Team trials in the spring, so she can represent Team USA again.

“Making the World team this year showed me that I’m capable, that I’m up there with the best in the world,” she says. “I want to make it back to Worlds next year—and hopefully win. That will be something I’ll chase for the rest of my career.”