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Friday, March 10, 2000
By Keith Morris
JOURNAL SPORTS WRITER
DETROIT - There will be no state title this year for Keristen LaBelle.
The Davison High sophomore, who two weeks ago became the first girl in state history to win a regional championship, lost her first match in the Division I individual state finals Thursday at Joe Louis Arena.
Wyandotte Roosevelt senior Kevin Lilienthal posted a 13-6 win at 103 pounds, dropping LaBelle to 50-11 and out of title contention in the double-elimination tournament which continues through Saturday.
LaBelle can still attain her goal of becoming the first girl to place among the top eight wrestlers at 103 and earn All-State honors. If she does, it is believed she'd be the first in the country to do so.
But she'll have to win the rest of her matches to do so, beginning with her second match this morning. Last year, Saginaw Buena Vista's Cynthia Harrold became the first girl in the state to qualify but she did not place.
Lilienthal (32-14), who placed fourth in his regional tournament, took control of the match with the first of his five takedowns and never trailed. He led 11-3 when the match was halted briefly after his fourth takedown caused LaBelle to cry out in pain. But the sophomore quickly collected herself and assumed the down position in the center of the mat then managed an escape before the second of the three two-minute periods concluded.
After picking up one penality point when Lilienthal was called for stalling then another point for an escape, LaBelle was within 11-6 but was taken down a final time to end the scoring.
LaBelle did not speak with reporters following her match.
"I had a lot of time to think about it," said Lilienthal of his match with LaBelle. "I went on the internet about a week ago to check (the pairings)."
He said he knew how the crowd would greet him after watching Harrold in last year's tournament.
"I knew she'd be the favorite because I watched the girl last year and the crowd was behind her," Lilienthal said. "She's quick and stronger than I predicted she'd be. I've wrestled girls before and they weren't very strong but she was a worthy opponent."
LaBelle is one of three girl qualifiers. The other two also lost their first match. Caledonia freshman Lynde Baltrusatis fell to 44-13 with a 10-7 loss to Ferndale sophomore J.P. Morgan (44-1) at 103 in Division II. Morgan is ranked third in the state behind two Division I wrestlers. Mason County Central senior Sandra Padnon (23-10) dropped a 7-2 decision to Whittemore-Prescott freshman Ollie Birkenbach (42-10) at 103 in Division IV.
All three will wrestle their second matches this morning. The winners will wrestle again shortly after 3 p.m., with All-State honors going to the winner.
LaBelle will wrestle no more than two matches today and would be guaranteed no worse than an eighth-place medal by winning both. If she survives until Saturday, she could place as high as third if she can win three matches on the final day.
"You've got to have your 'A' game on to do well and there was some added pressure on her with all the media following her around," said Davison coach Roy Hall. "That kid just got after her. She can (still) place."
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Davison's girl wrestler out of state finals
Friday, March 10, 2000
By Keith Morris
JOURNAL SPORTS WRITER
DETROIT - There will be no state title or All-State honors this year for Keristen LaBelle. The Davison High sophomore, who two weeks ago became the first girl in state history to win a regional championship, lost her second match in the Division I individual state finals this morning after losing in the first-round Thursday at Joe Louis Arena.
Today's loss to Richard Gruenberg of East Detroit in a 5-2 decision in a 103-pound division match knocked LaBelle out of the tournament.
On Thursday Wyandotte Roosevelt senior Kevin Lilienthal posted a 13-6, dropping LaBelle to 50-11 and out of title contention in the double-elimination tournament which continues through Saturday.
LaBelle had hoped to be the first girl to place among the top eight wrestlers. It is believed no girl in the nation has ever done that.
Last year, Saginaw Buena Vista's Cynthia Harrold became the first girl in the state to qualify but she did not place.
Lilienthal (32-14), who placed fourth in his regional tournament, took control of the match with the first of his five takedowns and never trailed. He led 11-3 when the match was halted briefly after his fourth takedown caused LaBelle to cry out in pain. But the sophomore quickly collected herself and assumed the down position in the center of the mat then managed an escape before the second of the three two-minute periods concluded.
After picking up one penality point when Lilienthal was called for stalling then another point for an escape, LaBelle was within 11-6 but was taken down a final time to end the scoring.
LaBelle did not speak with reporters following her match Thursday.
"I had a lot of time to think about it," said Lilienthal of his match with LaBelle. "I went on the Internet about a week ago to check (the pairings)."
He said he knew how the crowd would greet him after watching Harrold in last year's tournament.
"I knew she'd be the favorite because I watched the girl last year and the crowd was behind her," Lilienthal said. "She's quick and stronger than I predicted she'd be. I've wrestled girls before and they weren't very strong but she was a worthy opponent."
LaBelle was one of three girl qualifiers. The other two also lost their first match. Caledonia freshman Lynde Baltrusatis fell to 44-13 with a 10-7 loss to Ferndale sophomore J.P. Morgan (44-1) at 103 in Division II. Morgan is ranked third in the state behind two Division I wrestlers. Mason County Central senior Sandra Padnon (23-10) dropped a 7-2 decision to Whittemore-Prescott freshman Ollie Birkenbach (42-10) at 103 in Division IV.
"You've got to have your 'A' game on to do well and there was some added pressure on her with all the media following her around," said Davison coach Roy Hall after Thursday's match.
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Wrestling for acceptance
Participation increases for girls, but so do critics who complain they don't belong
By James Johnson
Democrat and Chronicle
(Feb. 6, 2000) --
It's been a week or
two, but Amber La Forme still rolls
her eyes at the memory. La Forme
and her teammates on the Eastridge
junior varsity wrestling team had a
dual meet scheduled against a
Monroe County League opponent.
When the Lancers arrived to weigh-in
she discovered that the match she
was going to wrestle in wasn't going
to take place after all.
According to her, the boy did not
want to wrestle a girl.
''You practice so hard all week,'' says
La Forme, a sophomore, ''then you
don't have a match.''
There are coaches, wrestlers and
parents who say a boy wrestling a
girl is not a good match. They would
prefer to have girls wrestling other
girls. The problem is that interest is
not high enough for Section V
schools to start all-girls teams.
So the girls who want to wrestle,
more often than not, have to go
toe-to-toe with boys.
''I wish (people) would accept it,''
says Wayne junior Andrea Molino,
who wrestled for two seasons on her
school's JV team. ''But there's not
much I can do about it.''
The argument that comes up the most when it comes to
boys wrestling
girls is that the boys are in a no-win situation.
You ''only'' beat a girl if you win. And if you lose?
''If you get beat by a girl you'll get a lot of
ribbing from your teammates,''
says Peter Clarcq, a 189-pounder at Eastridge.
Spencerport senior Shawn Hibbs, a state champion last
season, other
wrestlers and coaches all seem to have stories about
boys who quit or
nearly did so after losing matches to girls.
''They ask themselves 'Should I wrestle? What's wrong
with me?' '' says
Hibbs. ''I don't think you should get like that.''
Hibbs says he was uncomfortable during his only match
against a girl,
even though he was leading 14-0 before pinning her.
''I wasn't ready for it,'' says Hibbs. ''Certain moves
I thought 'I shouldn't do
that.'
''I don't know too many guys who are comfortable with
it. Some may feel
they can be more physical with guys.''
Neither Section V nor the New York State Public High
School Athletic
Association track the number of girls wrestling. The
National Federation
of State High School Association says 2,361 girls in
the country wrestled
on boys modified, freshman, junior varsity and varsity
teams during the
1998-99 school year.
The number was 1,907 in 1997-98. There are at least 11
girls wrestling at
some level in Section V.
''The trend has been consistently going up (over the
last 8-10 years),''
says NFSHSA assistant director Jerry Diehl. ''It's not
a high incline, but
it's going up.''
It remains to be seen whether interest will ever be
high enough for girls to
have wrestling leagues of their own.
Lloyd Mott, assistant director of the New York State
Public High School
Athletic Association, says there has been more of a
push in the last two
years from parents, plus female and male wrestlers to
seperate the
sexes.
''That would be a great thing,'' says Spencerport
coach Bill Jacoutot. ''It's
no different than in judo. I think you start causing
problems when you
start mixing the sexes.''
''It's going to possibly generate a bad taste in
everyone's mouth. If they
start their own programs, it could be like (the rise
of) women's hockey.''
In their blood
La Forme, Rachel Prince, her teammate at Eastridge,
and Molino all
come from wrestling families. Brothers. Cousins.
Uncles. They all
wrestled while La Forme, Prince and Molino watched, at
first.
''I always used to go to my brother (Jeremie's)
practices (at Greece
Athena),'' says La Forme. ''He would come home and say
'I still need to
practice', then he would practice on me.''
Prince has two brothers and both are on the Eastridge
varsity.
''My father would always talk about (wrestling) with
my older brother
Aaron and my younger brother Kyle,'' says Prince.
''Then, all my uncles
were into it.
''That's why I had to do it. It's fun and I think it's
the best sport. You work
with your muscles and your mind.''
Molino remembers going to matches with her father Dan,
who wrestled
when he was in high school.
''It's always been my favorite sport,'' she says.
Andrea's interest in wrestling picked up even more
after watching former
Attica standout Emme Conway, a Section V tournament
runner-up in
1996 as a freshman.
''I told her no because I didn't see too many (girls)
out there,'' says Dan
Molino, whose daughter joined the Wayne program as a
freshman. ''I
started to put some things together and I thought, if
you want to wrestle,
I'll let you try it.
''I told her right from the beginning what to expect.
(People) are going to
resent you, it's going to be an uphill climb.''
Dan Molino says that a couple of people have said
''they don't think it's
right'' that his daughter wrestles boys, but for the
most part people don't
say anything about it.
''But I know that there were kids who hated it,'' says
Dan Molino.
''Sometimes you get shunned out. The coach has to set
the tone.''
Total mismatch?
Every girl who wants to join her school's wrestling
team must undergo a
physical fitness test. La Forme's included included
sprints, agility drills,
a one-mile run and prolonged chin-ups known as arm
hangs to test her
strength.
If they pass the tests, they and their parents then
must sign injury waiver
forms.
The girls then contend with the first few awkward days
with male
teammates that might or might not accept them.
''In one instance, (girls) came to make the team and
then they sat there
and did nothing,'' says Clarcq.
''(Prince and La Forme) come and work hard. We do a
lot of things that
will test you mentally and physically.
''We don't give them any breaks.''
Girls in the seventh and eighth grades, wrestling in
the lightweight
divisions up to 119 pounds, can hold their own against
male opponents.
That begins to change as male wrestlers mature
physically, enabling
them to muscle their way to wins over girls.
Some male wrestlers refuse to square off against a
female opponent
under any circumstances at dual meets.
Eastridge varsity coach John Vandemark says that in 10
dual meets
where a boy is matched up against a girl, the match
won't take place in
six of those instances.
''(Teams) say we don't have anyone at that weight or
we're going to bump
a guy up,'' says Vandemark. ''It's always done to make
it look like that
wasn't the reason, but it was.
''At tournaments, you can't avoid (those matchups). At
a dual meet, (the
match) doesn't happen.''
Andrea Molino says that some of her male opponents
underestimate her
skill level, strength and toughness. One for instance,
stopped in the
middle of a match to see if Molino was ok after
accidentally knocking the
wind out of her during a takedown attempt.
''There are some who are into it, doing all of their
moves,'' says Molino.
''Some try to take it easy on me because I am a girl.
I can tell by the way
they react after the match (too).
''One kid that beat me, felt really bad. Another one
called me a nasty
name after I beat him.''
What's next?
How long will it be before there are all-girls teams
in Section V?
Estimates range from five years to never.
''To win that battle, you have to start at the
sectional-level,'' says Holley
coach John Grillo. ''That could be done next year.''
Grillo, who opposses girls wrestling boys, recommends
that each of the
state's sections field a team.
Wrestlers would train with the boys teams at their
schools during the
week and then travel with their sectional teammates to
meets and
tournaments on weekends.
If enough participation interest is there Grillo says,
perhaps countywide
teams could be formed.
''Every section in New York should have one team of
girls with a girl or
two in each weight class,'' says Grillo.
Jacoutot says that schools could choose to field an
all-girls team with
less weight classes.
''Start small, get bigger,'' says Jacoutot. ''There's
nothing wrong with that.
Publicize it. Start pee-wee and junior-high programs.
''The girls have to sell it to a school and the school
has to find
competition.''
Organizers of the New York State Female Folkstyle
Wrestling
Championships on Sunday in Geneva hope their event
will start to drum
up interest in wrestling among girls.
A similiar event recently in Ohio attracted 50
participants.
''If we can do that well in our first year we think we
will have had made an
impact,'' says Jeff Huether, the New York tournament's
coordinator and
whose daughter Becky wrestles at Geneva.
''We have to start somewhere.''
------------------------------------------
Hutchison family's hope falls
February 05, 2000
By CHRIS TALBOTT
Staff Writers
Melina Hutchison got a tough draw.
The Skyview High wrestler, the only female participant in this weekend's
Alaska Schools Activities Association 4A state wrestling
tournament, drew No. 1 Junior Vallodolid of Kodiak in Friday's preliminary
rounds.
"I might as well face him early if I have to face him at all," Hutchison
said after her 10-1 loss to the state's most dominant 112-pound
wrestler.
Valladolid knocked Hutchison out of the chase to join her older brother,
Zeb, as a high school state champion, but it was not an easy
victory.
"I always knew she was tough," said Vallodolid, who also faced Hutchison in
regionals. "(She has) control and endurance. She never
gives up. That's what I mean about endurance."
Hutchison, who opened the day with a 15-0 victory in the first round, has
needed most of those things during her time as a wrestler to
fend off her siblings, all eight of them. The Hutchisons are a wrestling
family, with everyone from age 20 down to age 3 involved in some
way or another. So she's spent her fair share of time wrestling brother and
sister alike on the living room floor.
Her main wrestling partner growing up was Zeb, a two-time state champion.
But these days she's a successful wrestler in her own right.
She's a two-time winner at both the women's wrestling nationals and the
World Championships team tryouts. She also won the silver
medal at the Worlds in Lodz, Poland, last summer.
Girls wrestling really hasn't caught on in the state yet, though. Several
female competitors have wrestled on the national level, but no one
consistently has made an impact on the state level, with the exception of
Hutchison.
The junior said it was a little lonely being the only girl in the
competition, but she expects to get some company soon.
"I wish there was (more girls)," she said. "And there will be when my sister
(Michaela) gets old enough."
Chances are every Hutchison kid will wrestler in some form or another by the
time the nine kids reach adulthood. It has become the
Soldotna family's hobby of sorts, supported and nurtured by parents Mike and
Mary.
Melina explained that her father always wanted to wrestle as a kid, but that
his parents wouldn't let him. When his children began showing
an interest in the sport because cousins were into it, Mike and Mary gave
them their full support.
"They seem to enjoy it no matter how they do," Mike said. "My feeling is
they should give 150 percent in whatever they do. I don't care if
it's wrestling or ballet as long as they put the effort into it."
Drawing on his unrequited fondness for the sport, Mike made sure his kids
had every opportunity to improve. Nothing was too much for
the kids, and he was even able to become involved.
"He didn't know a thing about wrestling," Melina said. "But he got a weight
room for us, put a wrestling mat in the living room and he
watched videos to learn the moves. Now he's a national coach."
Chances are we haven't seen the last of the Hutchison clan. They seem to get
better and better as they come along.
"They have a little bit of athletic skills, a good work ethic and they've
had some real good coaches all around," Mike said. "A lot of
different people in the state of Alaska have helped my kids. It's so nice to
have the support of the wrestling community."
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Rim's Van Dusen breaks new ground
She becomes first female wrestler to place in CIF championships, but
narrowly misses trip to Masters Meet.
February 20, 2000
ANDREW BAGGARLY
AZUSA Marcie Van Dusen lived out every girl's fantasy Saturday night. She
stood on a platform, was given a bouquet of roses and a
teddy bear, and treated to a standing ovation from about 800 people.
Then she was feted by her Rim of the World teammates.
"She's a stud," Rim 154-pounder Greg Smith said. "A total stud. That's all
there is to it."
In the most feminine way, of course.
Van Dusen's memorable high school wrestling career came to an end Saturday
night at the CIF-Southern Section Division V Individual
Championships. She placed fourth in the 121-pound class, losing her
third-place match on an 11-6 decision, and narrowly missed
becoming the first female to qualify for the Masters Meet.
But that's not to say the senior didn't break ground. Before Saturday, no
female wrestler ever had placed in a CIF meet.
"It's nice that all these people care about me," said Van Dusen of her
ovation. "I am a little disappointed, but I'm also so happy to be
where I am."
After losing in the quarterfinals, Van Dusen won twice to advance to the
third-place match, with the winner advancing to Masters. She
was tied 6-6 with Emmanuel Maldonado of Paramount, but was caught with a
reversal with 40 seconds left.
"I don't really remember a lot of it," Van Dusen said. "I never remember
what happens in my matches."
Yucca Valley's collecive memory proved to be equally short, shaking off a
heartbreaking loss to Rim in last week's CIF team dual
championship.
The Trojans finished a perfect 5-for-5 in finals matches in sweeping to the
team individual title with 177 points, outdistancing Rim, which
finished second with 159.5, and Chaparral, third with 155.5.
Yucca Valley junior 127-pounder Aaron Fregeolle was named lower-weights MVP
after pinning all four of his opponents, including
Frank Ekblad of Atascadero at 2:59 in the final.
It was the first of three consecutive individual titles for the Trojans.
Senior 132-pounder Alvin Robinson won a 13-5 decision over Lewis
Williams of Culver City and 137-pounder Bryan Stewart clinched his second
consecutive CIF individual title when he won a 4-3 decision
over Gary Feldon of San Marcos. Stewart won at 125 pounds last year, also
beating Feldon.
"We came here with confidence," Fregeolle said. "We knew we were gonna take
it."
Rim also finished perfect in finals matches, as sophomore 114-pounder Ricky
Turk and junior 154-pounder Greg Smith both won their
second consecutive titles.
Turk, who won at 105 pounds last year, pinned Chaparral's Eric Wurtz at
1:34. Smith, who was lower-weights MVP last year, moved
up in class and won the upper-weights award on Saturday after winning three
of his four matches by fall, including a final-match pin of Big
Bear's Alex Garcia at 1:37.
The Skyline League placed three teams in the top four. Skyline wrestlers won
10 of 14 individual titles.
Top-three placers from each division advance to the Masters Meet. Also
qualifying was Rim 137-pounder Leo Perez (third); Big Bear
142-pounder Matt Verkoelen (third); Big Bear 147-pounder Phillip Peery
(second); and Big Bear heavyweight Shaun Hannan (third).
Yucca Valley qualified five wrestlers for Masters, Big Bear four and Rim
three.
