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Wednesday, March 8, 2000
By Keith Morris
JOURNAL SPORTS WRITER
Like a magnet, they're drawn to her.
Members of the national media with a nose for an interesting story have found one.
And that story is Keristen LaBelle.
The Davison High sophomore is gaining national exposure as a member of the school's state championship wrestling team.
"HBO Sports spent the last two days with her," said Cardinals coach Roy Hall. "They followed her around school, went home with her, came to practice and videotaped her going through practice and lifting weights.
"Today, it was USA Today's turn. They came in and spent the day with her."
The attention is coming not because she's a girl competing in a boys' sport.It's there because she's a girl excelling in a boys' sport.
After becoming the first girl to win a Big Nine Conference wrestling title, LaBelle reached the district title match and then became the first girl in state history to win a regional crown.
In doing so, she qualified for the individual state finals, starting Thursday at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena. Saginaw Buena Vista's Cynthia Harrold was the first girl in the state to qualify a year ago after finishing fourth in the district and regional. She failed to place among the top eight in her weight class, however, the requirement to make All-State.
LaBelle, competing at 103 pounds in Division I, is 50-10 this season as she hopes to become the first All-State girl wrestler. It is believed she'd be the first girl in the country to accomplish such a feat. And remember, she is only a 10th-grader, so she could have two more chances.
HBO had cameras rolling as Davison won the Division I state team championship last Saturday in Battle Creek. Both HBO and CBS Sports, and probably others, will tape her this weekend.
Hall said the attention the sport is getting has to be good.
"Realistically, wrestling's a back page story and any extra media attention we can get for our program and the sport itself is terrific," the coach said.
Some attention, however, has not been welcomed.
"After she won the Big Nine, a local radio show was making a circus out of this," Hall said. "A DJ was trying to get her to wrestle him. Her parents and all of us were pretty upset. Keristen takes the sport very seriously and they were making a mockery of it. Anybody who can thrive in our environment is a special athlete and is not to be made a mockery of."
That was about the time that her parents and coach became somewhat protective of LaBelle, as far as national media was concerned. And the wrestler, herself, was concerned.
"I'm sure she didn't want it to be a sideshow and neither did her parents - they respect the sport," Hall said. "I think she shied away because she didn't want attention taken away from her teammates. And I want her to do as well as she can so I didn't want her to be be distracted."
The coach is confident in her chances.
"I really believe she'll place in the state, her talent's that good," Hall said.
And she's positive.
"I'm really pumped up about this week," LaBelle said. "I want to place. My goal was to get 40 wins, so I was pretty happy with 50. The team title, that was the best. I'm pretty excited about the individual titles, but you kind of put those things behind you and work for your next match."
She said she'll try to use any nervousness this weekend to her benefit.
"I might get a little bit of stage fright but I think I'll turn it into motivation," she said.
She'll certainly have support.
"My parents and grandparents and (three) brothers and sister will be there," she said. "And since we had 12 teammates qualify, we'll all have a lot of support."
LaBelle is not the only girl who'll be wrestling at Joe Louis Arena. Mason County Central senior Sandra Padnon (23-9) qualified at 103 in Division IV and Caledona's Lynde Baltrusaitis (44-12) at 103 in Division II.
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Caledonia wrestler first girl from GR area to qualify for state finals
Wednesday, March 8, 2000
By Jeff Chaney
The Grand Rapids Press
Lynde Baltrusaitis is no different than any other high school wrestler making the trip to the individual state finals this weekend in Detroit.
She wants to be a state champion.
The 103-pound freshman from Caledonia is different in one way, though. She is the first girl from the Grand Rapids area to qualify for the state finals.
Baltrusaitis is one of three girls who will be competing at the three-day event, which begins Thursday at Joe Louis Arena. She is in Division 2; Davison's Keristen LaBelle is in Division 1 and Mason County Central's Sandra Padnon is in Division 4. The three represent the largest number of female competitors to ever compete at the individual finals.
"This is a good trend for the sport," Caledonia coach Jim Maxim said. "It is good for girls to succeed in this sport because it is good for the sport. As a coach, I don't think wrestling gets enough exposure on an overall basis," he added. "All these kids put in a lot of work, so any attention is good."
The trend actually started last year when Saginaw Buena Vista's Cynthia Harrold was the first girl to qualify for state. She was eliminated after two rounds. Baltrusaitis hopes she can advance farther.
"I'm just going to go down there and give it my best because I don't have anything to lose," Baltrusaitis said. "My first match will be a really tough match, because he took first at his regional. I am pretty nervous."
Baltrusaitis (43-12) opens up with Ferndale's J.P. Morgan, who brings in a 43-1 record.
"Her chances down there will be tough," Maxim said. "I will never count her out, though.
"She is very technical, and she has a great amount of
heart," he added. "The only thing that holds her back is that sometimes she doesn't match up well with other wrestlers who have a lot of strength."
Whatever happens, Baltrusaitis believes she already has reached her main goal.
"Just making it to state has been a goal of mine since I started wrestling when I was seven years old," Baltrusaitis said. "I made my main goal now we will just have to see what happens."
And she knows a lot of people will be waiting to see what happens.
"I am going to have to wrestle hard because people will be expecting that," Baltrusaitis said. "A lot of people will be watching because three girls made it to state."
Baltrusaitis will have a lot of moral support in Detroit. Her brother Josh also qualified at 145 pounds.
"This feels really great," she said. "I get to wrestle at state, and get to go with my brother."
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'V' for women athletes: CSU finds: If you build it, they will come
(Published March 5, 2000)
Back in 1993, the California State University system signed a court agreement with the California National Organization for Women that many observers thought put the university in the legal equivalent of a full nelson. CalNOW had sued CSU for its failure to comply with state and federal laws guaranteeing women students athletic opportunities comparable to men, and CSU had signed a decree consenting to bring the percentage of women athletes to within 5 percent of the percentage of women enrolled, and to bring athletic funding within 10 percentage points of enrollment, all in five years.
With female enrollment at 57 percent but female athletic participation down around 35 percent, CSU had its work cut out for it. The big unanswered questions were: Did women at CSU really want all those athletic opportunities the system was about to create, and how much would the men's programs suffer as a result?
Six years later, the answers mark a victory for female athletes and gender equity and -- surprising to some -- a still-healthy men's athletic program as well. Women have flocked to the chance to compete, bringing with them skills refined in more vigorous high school sports programs and private youth sports leagues that have proliferated for girls in recent years. And at a time when the university was increasing funding for women's sports by a massive 258 percent, it was also able to boost funding for men's teams by 44 percent. CSU managed this through the generosity of alumni and California businesses, according to John Welty, president of Fresno State, who oversaw the effort to comply with the consent decree. At Welty's campus, for example, all of the costs of the new programs were covered by private fund raising, which grew from $1.2 million annually in 1993 to $6 million last year.
More than half of the campuses -- including Sacramento -- are now in compliance with the consent decree and the others are closing in. Thirty-eight new women's teams, all of which compete in the NCAA, have been added systemwide. Individual campuses made their own choices about what teams to add based on surveys of prospective students, which showed soccer and crew were in highest demand. Women now represent 51 percent of CSU athletes and receive 49 percent of the system's athletic scholarships. Nationally, those figures are 40 percent and 38 percent, respectively.
Not everybody is thrilled by the new women's sports focus. Three football programs -- at Chico, Hayward and Sonoma -- have been phased out since the consent decree was signed. Welty says, however, that those programs were losing money and fan support even before 1993, and might have been terminated regardless. Male wrestlers at CSU Bakersfield protested plans to limit the size of the team by filing a discrimination lawsuit that was recently rejected by an appeals court.
But CSU has been able to sidestep controversy by leveraging so much private support to bolster sports -- the women's program primarily, but the men's as well. That ability should provide both encouragement and a blueprint for other universities daunted by the prospective costs of complying with the law. For CSU's women athletes, who are nearing equal access to all the benefits that team sports provide, the rewards will be great.
