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The first girl Joe Sullivan signed up for the high-school wrestling team in his small northern community of Hazelton, B.C., won a gold medal in her inaugural provincial championships.

Of course, the young woman, Shelly Wright, won by default because none of the other competitors - all boys - would wrestle against her.

"It was a huge disappointment to both of us," Mr. Sullivan said yesterday of the 1994 meet. "But the next year, there were way more women involved in the sport."

Mr. Sullivan was an early advocate of women's wrestling in Canada, starting one of the country's first high-school programs for girls. This weekend, former student Carol Huynh, 27, won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympic Games in the 48-kilogram freestyle weight class, a victory many in the wrestling community believe will bring even more young women to the sport.

Greg Mathieu, executive director of the Canadian Amateur Wrestling Association, said of the organization's 15,000 members, 4,200 are women.

That number has already grown dramatically since the women's program began in 1993.

That year, Canada sent three women to the world championships, two of whom won medals.

"We said, 'Gee, we might be good at this, let's try and build a program,' " Mr. Mathieu said.

Enrolment jumped again in 2001, when it was announced that women wrestlers would compete in the 2004 Olympic Games, with most young women starting around the ages of 12 or 13, usually through a high-school program.

Lindsay Wickstrom, a 20-year-old wrestler from Saskatoon, started in the sport six years ago through her high-school team.

"I just wanted to try it out and I stuck with it," she said. "I like the intensity of it, the hard work."

She now wrestles with the University of Saskatchewan, where she trains five days a week, year-round, and recently returned from the World Junior Championships in Turkey, where she placed 10th.

Ms. Wickstrom hopes to go to the Olympics one day, and said that Ms. Huynh's win over the weekend will encourage more girls to explore the sport.

Her own parents were reluctant about signing her up at first, worried that she would get hurt, and she has also experienced some negative responses from people her age.

"A lot of times people think female wrestlers are butch or big and scary, but that's not true at all," she said.

Tim MaGarrey, provincial director of the Ontario Amateur Wrestling Association, said this perception is the biggest hindrance to enrolment.

"I'd be lying if I said we didn't get a few raised eyebrows," he said. "Little Suzie comes home and says, 'I want to wrestle' and the first thing you think of is Chyna from the WWF."

But in recent years, role models such as six-time women's world champion Christine Nordhagen, of Alberta, and Olympic silver medalist Tonya Verbeek, of Ontario, have shown Canadians that female wrestlers are not the bizarre creations of Vince McMahon.

"Sure, when they're in the competitive arena they're tough and aggressive, but away from that they're very much feminine," Mr. MaGarrey said.

Clubs across Ontario start getting more phone calls during each Olympic cycle, he said, and this year he expects a large boom.

"With the women performing so well, I would expect we'll get a bump in interest on the women's side in particular," he said.

In Hazelton, B.C., Mr. Sullivan finds this new interest extremely validating.

Before her win, Ms. Huynh credited him for starting a women's program in her tiny hometown at a time when most coaches couldn't fathom female wrestling.

"Some were adamantly opposed to it for various reasons, like that it was a men's sport," Mr. Sullivan said. "One guy said to me: 'Who wants to see big fat girls rolling around on a mat?' I would just say: 'Do you prefer to see big fat boys doing that?' "

Mr. Sullivan campaigned for women's teams, competitions and funding in B.C. even as other male coaches argued that wrestling uniforms were too revealing when worn by girls, and that it was inappropriate to have boys and girls on the same mat.

"I kept telling them, when some girl's ripping your head off, you don't feel particularly sexy at that moment," he said.

Wrestling was the last of combative sports to go to women's competition, he said, and he always believed it was a natural development.

"It was just difficult getting over those old habits and old ideas. Eventually it started growing so fast that those who were reluctant simply got left behind."

Now, Canada's women's wrestling team is an international force to be reckoned with and Mr. Sullivan, who retired from coaching last year, said that his time training young female wrestlers was the most rewarding period of his career.

But he still remembers young women whose parents were uncomfortable with their chosen sport. One of those girls was Ms. Huynh, whose father was initially concerned about his daughter throwing her weight around in the wrestling ring. "Now," Mr. Sullivan said, "he is her greatest fan."