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Kiara Baugh — Westlake High, Girls’ Wrestling
Kiara Baugh and her boyfriend, Ryan, always have something to talk about. The two both wrestle for the Westlake High Chaparrals.
Take down moves and pins may not be the average conversation between a 17-year old girl and her boyfriend, but Baugh is anything but average. Her persistency is a testament to that.
“Last year when they tried to start the team, I was the only girl to show up for the meeting, so I couldn’t wrestle because I didn’t have a team to wrestle with,” says Baugh, now a junior. “I tried to convince some of my friends to do it with me, but nobody wanted to do it.
“And then this year I got one friend to come out with me and another girl came out, too.”
This may only be Baugh’s first year on the team, but it seems she’s a natural at the sport. She finished first in the 119-pound weight class at the Austin Independent School District Wrestling Invitational in December, and she is already thinking about the possibility of taking to the mats in college.
“I don’t really know if it comes naturally to me,” she says. “Sometimes I’ll take someone down in 13 seconds, and sometimes it will take two minutes, so I don’t know. I just put all my energy into it and try to be really good at it.”
To say that this is Baugh’s first year wrestling isn’t entirely true. She grew up as the youngest of six, and according to Baugh, her 20-year-old sister, Tara, taught her a few things.
“She was always picking on me,” says Baugh. “And I’d fight back sometimes. I think I got a lot of her strength and ability to stand up for herself. She was a big tomboy.”
Baugh wants to wrestle in college, but she still has the rest of this season and another before she has to think about that.
“I’m just working my butt off so I can get a chance to go to state.”
— CJ Lampman
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GIRLS BECOMING ACCEPTED PART OF WRESTLING COMPETITION
The Virginian-Pilot
(Norfolk, VA) February 4, 2000, Friday,
RECENTLY THE Crestwood and Hickory middle school wrestling teams squared off
in a battle of two unbeaten programs. While it was a spirited and fiercely
fought match, it was notable in another way. Five female wrestlers, three
from Hickory and two from Crestwood participated in the match.
Representing Hickory were Cori Oram, Jessie Motil and Jill Lepp. From
Crestwood were Brittany Jackson and Tabitha Golt.
''It's a sign of the times,'' said Crestwood coach Martin Asprey. ''More and
more girls are participating in sports that were once thought of as sports
for males only.''
While Asprey agrees that there are certain accommodations that must be made
such as separate facilities and having a female administrator present, he
doesn't see participation by girls as a problem.
''I don't even think about them being girls anymore,'' said Asprey.
''They're wrestlers like everyone else on the team. The guys like it; they
get behind the girls when they're out on the mat. It brings more exposure to the sport because people want to watch the girls wrestle. It gets the fans in the stands excited.''
Hickory coach Cliff Brown agreed that the female wrestlers give the sport a
different type of fan base.
''The fans go wild when the girl wins,'' said Brown. ''They are viewed as
the underdog whenever they go out, and the crowd is always pulling for
them.''
While Brown says the sport will remain dominated by males, the girls are not
so convinced.
Golt, the most experienced and polished wrestler of the five, wrestles on
the middle school varsity and is confident in her ability to ''beat most of
the boys in my weight class on our team. . . . ''Most of the boys on the other teams think
that they can beat me because I'm a girl. I have a few surprises for them.''
Golt had several surprises for the boys at the Great Bridge wrestling
tournament where she won four out of five matches en route to winning the
bronze medal.
Wrestling is a big part of the Golt family. Two of her sisters, Brandy and
Samantha, wrestle for Oscar Smith High School as does her brother, David,
who Golt credits with getting his siblings interested in the sport. Another brother,
Fred, wrestles for Crestwood.
''I chose wrestling because I thought it would be fun,'' Tabitha Golt said.
''It has been fun for me and I plan to continue through high school.''
Her friend and co-wrestler, Brittany Jackson, tried other sports but found
wrestling more satisfying.
''I tried gymnastics, but I like the idea of wrestling against the boys,''
she said. ''That's the fun part.''
Hickory's Oram also broke into another male-dominated sport. She is also a
starting guard for the Hawks football team.
''It's fun to push the boys around. I won last week 13 to 2 against a boy,
and that was cool, really cool!''
The competition is also a motivating factor for Motil, a seventh-grader and
the youngest of the female wrestlers.
''Think how cool it is when you go out there and beat some boy. It proves
that girls can do anything that they try. Now when we go out on the mat the
boys see us as equals.''
Lepp, the third of the Hickory wrestlers, said there is only one down side.
''If we hurt the boys, wow do they get mad!'' she said.
Lepp chose wrestling because she wanted ''something that could give me a
good workout. Wrestling does that and more.''
For the record, Crestwood beat Hickory, 48-32, in a match that came down to
the last three weight divisions. The matches of Motil, Lepp, Jackson and
Oram were exhibitions and did not count in the score.
Only Motil came away with a victory, by one point over a boy. Lepp battled
her male opponent before losing on a decision in the last minute. Jackson
and Oram were caught in pinning combinations early but refused to let their male
counterparts pin them.
Golt wrestled varsity at 122 pounds. Her teammates went wild in the first
period when she avoided a pin and scored two points for a reversal.
Eventually, she was pinned, much to the disappointment of the crowd.
----------------------------
Female gymnast finds outlet in H.S. Wrestling
Asbury Park Press (Neptune,
NJ.) February 5, 2000
Female gymnast finds outlet in wrestling SINCE HER days
as a nationally-ranked child gymnast, North Hunterdon senior Renata
Mannino has been a fierce competitor. So when she had to stop competing two
years ago because of knee trouble, she fell into a funk.
"When I left gymnastics I got into all the wrong stuff," she said. "I didn't
love school. I just did everything to act out and I was a pain in the butt.
I've tried to fix
things my senior year."
She found something of a remedy by joining the Lions' wrestling team this
past November.
"I was a gymnast for 11 years and I blew my knee out and had surgery in the
sixth grade," said Mannino, who competed for United States Gymnastic
Association
and Yury's Gymnastics team in Albany, N.Y. "It was depressing when I had to
finally stop. It was depressing. I had to sit around for a year, but I
thought ... maybe
I could be on the wrestling team."
She had heard about sign-ups and when junior teammate Pat Shaddow passed her
a sheet to make a commitment, Mannino called the bluff. This isn't an easy
girl to
intimidate. She loves challenges. She has sky-dived and hopes to help pay
her way through college by racing motorcycles and has bungee jumped.
"They put the bet on the table and I had to take it. Pat and everybody else
didn't think I'd show up," said the 94-pounder, who wrestles at 103.
"They have such a sense of team up here," Mannino said. "The last couple of
weeks I've felt more comfortable. But it was really hard at first. I had
nobody to talk
to. I just couldn't ask for help. I needed something to do that would be
physically challenging. I figured this would be a good sport.
Mannino who called her first month in the North wrestling room "hell month,"
is a very physical 17-year-old. She benches between 100 and 110 pounds. But
she
has found that wrestling is quite a rugged sport.
Though she has been pinned in both junior varsity bouts she wrestled in and
accepted a varsity forfeit against Franklin last week, coach Dennis Haughey
and the
Lions have been impressed by her determination. She has rarely missed
practice.
"The kids respect her," Haughey said. "There are kids who have quit here. Or
kids who haven't come out, but Renata has stuck to it. I told her from the
very
beginning that there was little chance that she'd ever actually wrestle in
a match. She's given everything she's had. The kids are behind her."
Modest growth
Wrestlers across New Jersey are anxiously awaiting tomorrow.
It's the day of the NJSIAA growth allowance. Wrestlers in all weight classes
will be allowed to to go up two pounds so, for example, competitors who
have
wrestled at 103, can actually weigh in at 105. Victory needed Sterling
the defending South Jersey Group II champion needs a victory when it hosts
Absegami
today. Sterling will wrestle Absegami as part of a tri-match.
Sterling is 7-7 and a record of at least .500 is needed to qualify for the
NJSIAA sectional tournament.
The official sectional pairings will be released Tuesday.
A week from today, Paulsboro hosts Phillipsburg.
-------------------------------------
Women pause to celebrate strides of a generation
Des Moines Register; Des Moines, Iowa;
Feb 8, 2000; Clark Nancy;
National Girls and Women in Sports Day will be celebrated Wednesday with
special events in all 50 states and around the world.
The question that springs to mind: Why?
Today's generation of young women sees nothing special, nothing monumental,
nothing groundbreaking about
participating in sports. Girls pull on their soccer shorts, break in their
softball gloves, wake up early for swim
practice, learn their gymnastics routines, work on their three-point shots
and run sprints every day.
They have never known a time when rules -society -wouldn't let them pursue
their athletic dreams.
Girls playing sports? Once the exception, now it's mainstream.
Girls play rough, hard and smart and nobody thinks twice about it.
Women are taking up sports like hockey, wrestling and boxing that have been
strictly in the male domain.
They're embracing extreme sports, diving off cliffs, climbing snow-capped
mountains, rowing across oceans
and skiing across glaciers.
And we admire them.
Women also are turning their athletic instincts into fulfilling careers in
coaching, sports medicine and sports
promotions and public relations.
"I enjoy talking to the kids and giving back what was taught to me," said
Shelley Sheetz, a former Cedar
Rapids Kennedy basketball star and all-American at Colorado who now is a
first-year assistant coach at
Washington State. "Coaching is becoming more popular for women.
"It's something I've always wanted to do. I always figured that when my
playing days were over I would
coach."
A generation ago, opportunities were so limited for women in sports that it
wouldn't have been practical to
consider a coaching career.
The outlook has changed over the past 30 years, for three reasons:
* Title IX, the guideline that prohibits schools receiving federal funds
from discriminating against women
-including in athletics -was approved in 1972.
* Athletic apparel companies realized there were billions of dollars to be
made by selling their clothes and
shoes to girls.
* Men's athletic organizations such as the NCAA and the NBA realized there
were millions of dollars to be
made by sponsoring women's sports.
Progress is progress, whether it is the result of principle or greed.
And it is progress we will commemorate Wednesday.
Why a National Girls and Women in Sports Day? It's not just to mark the
achievements of athletes, but to
acknowledge the progress of women around the world and of the world in
appreciating and valuing women.
It's a day to remember:
All the girls whose schools offered sports for boys but not for them;
All the girls who had to buy their own uniforms and equipment and pay for
their own meals and
transportation;
All the young women who played college sports even though scholarships were
not available to them;
All the coaches of women's teams who had to take second and third jobs to
make ends meet;
All the outstanding female athletes who had no opportunity to play
professionally;
All the girls who tried out for boys' teams because there were no teams for
them;
All the college women who had to play intramural sports because schools
wouldn't fund sanctioned teams
for them;
All the girls who asked about starting a sports team, but were told to try
out for cheerleading instead;
And all the girls who ever watched a boy hit a home run, sink a jump shot,
dribble a soccer ball, drop a birdie
putt, slap a puck or soar over a hurdle and said:
"I'd like to try that."
