Kylee Gaddy says she is proud to wrestle on inaugural team
OCEAN CITY — Kylee Gaddy, who started wrestling with the Upper Township Hornets when she was about 7 years old, is a Hornet again.
This time she’s a proud Hornet on the Delaware State University wrestling team, a Division I program.
Kylee, a pre-nursing major and daughter of Calvin and Sarah Gaddy, is finishing her freshman year at DSU, where she competed on the inaugural women’s wrestling team.
DSU in Dover, one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), finished its first year in Division I wrestling in March. As a testament to their dual commitment to the sport and academics, Kylee and four of her teammates were named as NCAA Scholar All-Americans in March.
“My dad interested me in this sport. He always advocated for athleticism within the family,” she said.
Kylee quickly realized she was pretty good at it, especially when moms of the boys she wrestled were mad because she was beating their sons.
After wrestling through her childhood, she took off the first two years of high school because she had been wrestling for so long. She grew up in Upper Township and then Ocean City from third grade to part of high school.
Midway through her sophomore year, she transferred from Ocean City High School to Holy Spirit High School in Absecon. When she got there, she heard an announcement the school was looking for extra athletes for the wrestling team.
RELATED STORY: Kenya Sloan starts Division I women’s wrestling at DSU
“I was like, ‘Wait, I’m pretty good at this,” she told herself. “I’ve done it before. I remember I was pretty good, so why don’t I try it again?” She had been playing softball and cheerleading, but realized softball “just wasn’t fun for me.”
She excelled quickly on the Spartan team. After high-placed finishes in tournaments, she ended up fourth in regions at 145 pounds her junior year.
“I kind of like picked it up very, very, very quickly. I was surprised,” she said.
Although wrestling is a winter sport in high school, she kept competing right through the summer after her junior year. She finished first in the Cadet bracket of an international tournament in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean Clash, wrestling through a knee injury and compiling a 4-1 record for the gold medal.
“I got to be there for a week and wrestle with this club called Copa Sparta that’s in San Juan, Puerto Rico. That was a little bit different from what I usually did in high school. It was freestyle wrestling.”
Kylee won the 165-pound title at the 2023 Rumble at the Pines Tournament. She also made it to the finals of the Rumble in the Pines tournament in December 2024. She was leading the match 3-2 against Ocean City High School’s Danna Ramirez, but had to withdraw because of injury midway through, getting second place instead because of injury default.
Kylee said she didn’t make it to states her senior year at Holy Spirit — she is a 2025 graduate — because of health issues, but kept wrestling even after the season. She found more success in multiple tournaments.
She also started off well in her senior year, taking fifth place at the grueling Beast of the East tournament in the 135-pound class. Kylee said she was supposed to wrestle two weight classes lower but got bumped up and had to face the eventual winner and Super 32 champion Taina Fernandez. She lost, but noted, “I’m the only girl that didn’t get checked in like 3 seconds or pinned immediately, so it was pretty cool.”
After that, she said, “I was runner-up in pretty much every single tournament. I was doing pretty well.” At the Virginia Beach Duals, she went 6-1. She beat the state champion in a beach tournament and felt she would have fared well if she made it to states her senior year. She also won a Pin Cancer tournament in Delaware just before heading to college.
Moving to the next level, Kylee said she was attracted to DSU for the community it provided her.
“All my life, I feel like I’ve always been the odd one out. No one really shared the same culture or understood the same things I understood about myself as a person,” she said. “Wrestling was predominantly white. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I kind of always was the odd one out. I ended up hearing that this (DSU wrestling) program was launched and I’m like, ‘Wow, this is two hours away and it’s Division I.’
“I’ve always wanted to go Division I and there’s girls like me. (Before) people would say stuff like, ‘Oh, Kylee, you’re the only mixed girl, the only Black girl on the team. I guess I longed for that connection with others.”
She found those wrestlers like her on the Hornets team.
She also was attracted to the academics at DSU.
“I really like the academic aspect because I did not take my academics lightly in high school while wrestling. I was on the honors society, and I took all AP classes while doing everything I did. So even now I’m kind of the same way.”
One more thing impressed her — meeting the DSU wrestling coach, Kenya Sloan.
“To be part of the first D1 women’s HBCU wrestling team, it’s pretty obvious that there’s never been anybody like us before,” she said.
Coach Sloan said recruiting Kylee was unique. Sloan was hired to start the program in mid-June 2025, which is long after most students have committed to colleges and most athletes have committed to programs. (See related story about coach Sloan.)
“Kylee came to us,” Sloan said. “She had actually committed to another university nearby. I was a bit late to the game in recruiting everyone for this team just because of the timeline that we had.”
She found Kylee’s information when going through some recruiting questionnaires submitted months before she was hired.
“I thought I’d give her a shout because she had a little bit of success on the local level,” Sloan said. “When I reached out to her, she told me that she had already committed to another program, but I found out that her commitment wasn’t binding, it was pretty much just verbal. With intentions of being respectful to the program she had committed to, I didn’t really plan on taking it any further.”
Kylee did. “She followed up and said, ‘You know, I’d actually really, really love to wrestle at Delaware State if it’s at all possible, if you’ll give me an opportunity.’”
Sloan told Kylee she had to have a conversation with the program to which she verbally committed and then they would talk again.
“She came to campus, I think, the day after we first met over a phone call, so I could tell that she was eager,” Sloan said. “That’s something I could tell about Kylee Gaddy the first time I met her and that’s something I’ll still say about her today. She takes initiative and she’s eager to do what she needs to do in order to go where she wants to go.”
The coach said there were some small hurdles to get her to DSU, “but every single one she took on bravely to make sure she was going to be on this inaugural roster. I’m really glad that we were able to secure her this year and for the next four, hopefully.”
Sloan said Kylee is a committed athlete.
“She’s somebody who shows up every day and will give her best. She’s even endured a few injuries this year or was struggling with some previous ones, which can be a bit discouraging for an athlete. Regardless, she still showed up every single day and worked hard.”
She said Kylee shows initiative by always asking how she can improve.
“She’s a tough competitor. She competes with grit. She’s young, so the transition for a high school senior into their freshman year of college is brutal. I mean that honestly for anyone in that transition,” Sloan said. “There’s a huge learning curve and she’s taking it with grace and poise.”
The coach noted Kylee didn’t have the same success she had in high school, but that is the case for college freshmen leveling up to a Division I sport.
“She still handled it with grace and she’s learned and she’s grown,” Sloan said. “She’s one of the most improved athletes on our team. Whether she won or she lost, her opponent knew she was a tough competitor.” (The team honored her as the most improved wrestler.)
Kylee is loving her time at DSU.
“I’m learning everything about being a Division I wrestler,” she said. “I’m not going to put so much pressure on myself that I have to win because I know that one day within my career it is all going to make sense.”
She also won’t forget how proud she is to be part of this wrestling program.
“When I saw they had launched the first Division I women’s HBCU (wrestling team) in the nation, I was like, this is great. This is exactly what I want, but I never thought in a million years that I would actually be on this team and one of the first ever. It really makes me proud regardless of what happens when it comes to wrestling in my matches.
“I can feel the progression not only in me as a wrestler, but also as a person, and that’s all I could ask for.”
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
Photos courtesy of Kylee Gaddy.