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By Mike Wood
February 17, 2000 Contra Costa Times,Ca.
The wrestlers at the high school tournament in Livermore were wearing
swimming caps underneath their headgear to cover their long hair.
But that was not the giveaway. It was the references to "girl power" that
provided the tip-off. You can't help notice that more girls are hitting the
mats as competitors on the high school scene.
Girls' tournaments are a growing trend as girls become more prevalent on
many high school teams.
Girls are showing some staying power on the wrestling mat, one of the last
male bastions of the sports world.
"They have to get used to us being here," Clayton Valley High School
sophomore Emily Sisson said. Emily has stuck with wrestling despite having
her left shoulder broken three times in two years.
"We're not going away," Las Lomas junior Jessica Dougherty added.
Wrestling is one of the few prep sports that does not offer separate leagues
for girls. In recent years, girls' leagues for water polo and golf have been
added in the North Coast Section.
Wrestling remains a gender-neutral sport, albeit predominately male. But
there are signs that the testosterone-fueled hammerlock on the sport may be
weakening:
Tournaments for girls drew considerable turnouts this winter at Del Mar-San
Jose and Vintage-Napa. Livermore's Jim Miltner Memorial Invitational had a
girls' division for the third year. Edison-Stockton is hosting a California
State Invitational Open for girls on March 18.
More high school girls are making it through the grueling training at the
beginning of the season and finishing with the team. Veteran coaches used to
seeing one or two girls come out but not make it through tryouts are now
seeing handfuls of girls lasting the season.
Ygnacio Valley has five girls on its team. Teams in Napa and Vallejo have
more. Berkeley, Freedom and Clayton Valley each have three girls.
Girls are beating boys more frequently. Most wrestlers say that boys still
win most matchups, but a girl beating a boy is not as unusual as it was five
years ago.
The unwritten rule has been that girls wrestle for the junior varsity team.
But this season, Malinda Ripley earned the spot as a regular varsity
wrestler at Antioch's Deer Valley High at 105 pounds.
Malinda took seventh place at the prestigious Mission San Jose Invitational
this month. She was the only girl in the 16-wrestler bracket and was the
first girl to win a medal at the tournament.
New ground was broken at last year's California Interscholastic Federation
state championships as Oakland High School's Tina Nguyen became the first
girl to compete in its 27-year history.
Many girls say they expect interest in girls' wrestling to increase with the
inclusion of women's freestyle as an official sport in the 2004 Olympics.
For now, high school girls' main options are working as statisticians or
wrestling JV and filling in at tournaments.
"It's not fair for the girls, because they don't get the chance to shine and
get the spotlight," Clayton Valley coach Chuck King said. "They don't get to
be at NCS and state championships. They're fighting to be on the male
varsity teams."
Several coaches are impressed by the mental toughness of the current crop of
female wrestlers, who compete in one of the most physically demanding
sports.
Mauricio Tijero, an assistant coach for Monte Vista and Concord, trains 27
female wrestlers at the Concord Youth Center.
"They have something to prove because they are in a sport where they are not
wanted ... by some of the fans and some of the parents," Tijero said.
"That's why they train so hard."
Though the presence of female wrestlers becomes less of a novelty each
season, the growth hasn't been phenomenal.
Numbers actually were down in a CIF participation survey based on the
1997-98 season. Of the state's 23,657 wrestlers, 494 were girls. That number
fell from 541 in the 1995-1996 survey.
The drop occurred during a period that showed a 16.2-percent increase in
overall girls' participation in prep sports. When the CIF does its analysis
this year, many coaches and wrestlers predict the numbers will be up.
Girls' leagues may not happen overnight, but they are seen by many as
inevitable. At the very least, the gender mix on teams should continue to be
less male-dominated.
Earning respect
In four years at the 105-pound weight class, San Ramon Valley High School's
Ryan Pong has faced about a half-dozen girls.
Ryan is the defending North Coast Section champion at 105 pounds. He faced
Malinda at the Iron Man Tournament in Newark in December. It was her first
varsity tournament, but Ryan was impressed.
"She's the toughest opponent I've faced this season," he said. "I thought I
could break her down mentally. She never broke down and never stopped, even
though I won by technical fall."
Malinda gained attention a year ago as a freshman when she was named most
valuable wrestler on the junior-varsity team.
"They pick on me just like any other wrestler," she said. "They've accepted
me as a wrestler. If a girl can handle it, why shouldn't she be able to
wrestle the guys?"
Girls such as Ygnacio Valley's Kimmie Vanderbilt said they decided to sign
up on a whim. Others got into the sport because they had siblings who
wrestled.
Monica Unpingco was the first of seven girls from a family of 11 to wrestle.
She now trains girls at the Concord Youth Center.
Following in Monica's footsteps was younger sister Rosie, who gained
attention by placing third at the USA Wrestling women's freestyle
championship in 1996.
Rosie, who graduated from Antioch High School in 1998, wrestled varsity.
"I've seen Malinda, and she reminds me a lot of my sister," Monica said.
"Her technique is quite good."
Clayton Valley junior Rachel Salazar got into wrestling because her older
brother Matt wrestled. The experience paid off, as she finished second at
105 pounds in the Bay Valley Athletic League JV championships as a freshman.
"My brother was on the team, so I was used to wrestling when I got to high
school," Rachel said.
Others saw it as a natural transition from kick boxing or karate.
"I went in from kick boxing," said Berkeley's Christie Ravera. "I think my
parents knew I wasn't going into ballet. I thought I had so much physical
conditioning from kick boxing and hockey, but I almost died the first day of
practice. I was so exhausted."
Staying power
Wrestling has a high dropout rate. Many quit because of the intense training
and physical toll.
Jessica has been the only girl on the Las Lomas team for three years. She
said the first year she felt like the "ugly duckling" and thought nobody
expected her to last.
"I had a bet with a guy on the team who said I would quit, and he was the
meanest (to me) of anyone on the team," she said. "But I stuck it out. I got
my ass kicked for a year, but it was worth it."
Others have trouble persuading their peers of exactly what they are doing.
"A lot of people think of me wrestling and think I'm like Chyna (a female
professional wrestler in the World Wrestling Federation)," Ygnacio Valley
wrestler Stacy Carta said. "But that is fake. What we do is not fake at
all."
A league of their own
A girls' high school team is already a reality at Thousand Oaks High School
in Southern California. Shannon Yancey, a four-time world silver medalist
and national freestyle women's team member for USA Wrestling, coaches a team
of 20 girls. They compete mostly in tournaments, but Bill Clark, CIF's
Southern Section assistant commissioner, said a girls' league is quite
possible in the future for the Marmonte League.
Girls' wrestling is on the agenda March 2 at the CIF's Wrestling Advisory
Committee meeting. The group will discuss ideas for the development of
girls' wrestling, CIF spokesman Jim Duel said. Any recommendation would then
be forwarded to the CIF's member sections and the Federation Council.
NCS Commissioner Paul Gaddini said girls' leagues have not been discussed at
the section level. He added that the existence of girls' tournaments is a
crucial step toward starting girls' leagues.
"We seem to be entering the next stage, with special competitions that have
been taking place," Gaddini said. "The first step is girls competing with
boys, and that began 20 years ago."
Gaddini said a prospective girls' league would not necessarily need to have
the 14 weight classes that boys have. He cited the example of girls' golf,
which uses a different scoring system from boys.
"In boys golf, we have six golfers and score five (per team), but what we
found with the girls is they are not at the stage yet," he said. "So we have
up to four participants and three scoring. Our goal is to get them up to
six. But we don't want to do that prematurely."
Many female wrestlers said that if a girls' team were an option, many more
would participate.
"Our stat girls took a poll and showed that plenty of girls would sign up if
we had a girls' team," Emily said.
But not all female wrestlers are in favor of girls' leagues.
"I hope that I would be fortunate enough one day to earn my way onto a
varsity team, not through good luck or which gender I was," Christie said.
Malinda also said she wouldn't want to be part of a girls' league.
"It wouldn't be the same if they tried to separate it," she said. "I don't
think enough girls take it seriously."
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Female competitors winning respect on the mat
By Mike Wood
Published Thursday, February 17, 2000 Contra Costa Times
Many male high school wrestlers call it a no-win situation.
With girls' participation in wrestling on the upswing, matches between the
sexes are increasing at tournaments and dual meets. The pairing usually
finds the girl an overwhelming crowd favorite and the boy viewed as the
antagonist.
"You look at it as a lose-lose situation," Campolindo's Scott Fukayama said.
"The girl is perceived as the underdog, and it's a tough scenario. It's a
tough psychological thing if you lose to a girl. And if you win, you beat a
girl."
As a 105-pound wrestler, Scott has wrestled quite a few girls. In his
freshman season, he had to beat Katie Robinson to earn his spot at 105.
He and other male wrestlers, such as San Ramon Valley's Ryan Pong, said that
girls have gained more respect as competitors.
Ryan, the North Coast Section's defending champion at 105 pounds, said he's
faced about seven girls in four years in his weight class, which has more
girls than the upper weights. He said attitudes are changing for the better.
"I think that in the past, the guys haven't been treating the girls well,"
Ryan said. "But now, they've become workout partners, and we've learned to
respect them and not discriminate against them. They've been accepted as
athletes."
Girls say they understand the dilemma boys face when competing against them.
Las Lomas junior Jessica Dougherty, a third-year wrestler, earned her first
victory over a boy as a sophomore.
"It was a pin, and it made my day," she said. "I try my hardest when it's a
guy. But I tend to feel bad for guys when they lose because it's
embarrassing to them."
Greg Chappel, who has been Liberty High's coach for 20 years, said he is
quick to console a boy who loses to a girl because egos are fragile in the
early to middle teen years. Chappel said he's seen several instances of boys
quitting after losing to girls.
"It's still bad to a guy," Chappel said. "I had a kid lose to a girl
recently, and I went right to him and talked to him and made sure he stuck
with it."
Girls say they sometimes hear fans buzzing behind their backs because they
are wrestling boys. But few say anything to their faces. The girls also say
their parents stand behind them.
Carolyn Vanderbilt, whose daughter Kimmie is a freshman wrestler at Ygnacio
Valley High School, said she has no problem with her daughter wrestling
boys.
"I've had people come up to me and say, 'How can you let a boy float over
your daughter and reach around and lock her up and do all these moves to
her?' " she said. "But it's just a sport, it's supervised, and it's
perfectly proper."
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