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USA Today; Arlington; Mar 10, 2000; Debbie Howlett
DAVISON, Mich. -- Keristen LaBelle wrestles for all the same reasons as her male teammates.
She loves the competition.
The sweat and hard work, the pain of hardening her body into a weapon with endless hours in the weight room and the slippery tedium of refining her technique on the practice mats -- none of that is for fun. It's aimed at just one moment.
"When you're out there and the referee raises your hand and the other guy's head is hanging down," LaBelle says, "that's the best feeling."
Six years ago LaBelle watched two older brothers wrestle at a weekend tournament and asked to try out. Her father and mother agreed, mainly to humor her. A couple of weeks of hard-nosed practice, they figured, would temper her enthusiasm. It only fueled the fire. She gave up tap and ballet. She quit the cheerleading squad. As a sophomore, LaBelle becomes the first girl to wrestle in the Michigan state Division I high school championships. The double- elimination meet started Thursday and runs through the weekend.
Other girls have wrestled boys in the lower divisions here and elsewhere, but none has come as close to seriously competing for a state title.
A blond strand of 20-gauge wire, the 5-3 LaBelle has compiled a 50- 10 record wrestling at 103 pounds for the powerhouse Davison program. She can bench-press 180 pounds. "She's very intense, very competitive. Technically, she's as sound as anybody," says her coach, Roy Hall.
LaBelle will be one of 16 wrestlers in her weight class from the biggest schools in the state. She has beaten five of the others in meets this season. Her goal is to place in the top eight and win all- state honors.
Her strategy: "Be really aggressive. Keep on the guy; break him down. Keep shooting. Keep slapping his hands away. Keep banging his head down. Wear him out."
The style is a hallmark of the Davison program, which won the state title last weekend and has sent a record 12 wrestlers, one in all but two of the weight classes, to the state meet.
"We're family," says Joe Whitman, a junior 135-pounder who is undefeated in 53 matches this year. "She's our little sister. She gets us going. . . . It kills us to see her lose."
For other boys, especially some of her opponents, it kills them to see her win.
At a tournament a few years back, one boy refused to wrestle her, saying it was against his religion. The idea still astonishes her: "I was like, 'Wow, what kind of religion is that?' "
More often it's the parents who have a hard time adjusting to the idea of their son losing to her. She often has to endure insults and angry words from adults in the stands while she's leaving the mat. "You ignore it, shrug it off," LaBelle says.
She hopes one day to wrestle in a college women's program, perhaps at the University of Minnesota at Morris, where Doug Reese established the first women's wrestling program in the nation.
And, as LaBelle points out, women's wrestling will debut as a medal sport at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.
First, though, she has the state meet in her sights.
"You have to believe you can beat anybody," she says. "You let your meanness out and compete. It's awesome."
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OK to hit a girl? Increase of females in high school contact sports brings problems, rewards
USA Today; Arlington; Dec 21, 1999; Karen Thomas;
Nicole Stock, 13, once had her hockey gear shoved into a toilet.
Rebecca Perlmutter remembers hearing a high school wrestling coach cry out, "Don't get beat by a girl!"
After three years, Sandra Pontuso can't convince her mom to come to her football games. "She promises she'll come next year, when I play varsity."
Today's pioneering girls are stepping out into the sports arenas that long have been dominated by males. Full-body contact games are no longer a boys-only club, and players, parents and coaches are faced with a new set of problems as the sexes mix it up in the crashing, bashing, tackling, hit-somebody pastime traditionally known as boys' play.
The number of girls wrestling and playing hockey is skyrocketing, both in school programs and in community organizations. And while the number of female players on high school football teams is leveling off, more girls are reaching higher competitive levels and younger girls are getting involved with the game.
Final games are being played nationwide in the NFL's first season of its restructured youth program for 6-to-12-year-olds. Partly in response to the rising number of young girls who want to play football (about 40% of the 5 million kids in NFL youth programs nationwide are female) parents wanted a tamer sport, according to NFL research. So they took the tackle out this year.
But not everyone agrees that creating gentler, kinder versions of these dangerous sports is the way to incorporate the rising number of girls. The hockey world is in hot debate about whether co-ed competition should stop at age 12 or 13, as boys grow bigger and stronger. The wrestling community is scurrying to develop women-only clubs for the growing masses of females who eagerly take to the mat with an often-surprised male opponent.
"It's not like we're out there and getting completely mutilated or injured," says Perlmutter, 16, who has three female teammates on the Gunn High wrestling team in Palo Alto, Calif.
Co-ed play is the choice of Glenview (Ill.) Stars' goalie Stock, a four-year veteran of ice hockey, who says she's improving her skills because boys have harder shots.
Right now, official stances in these sports leave the decision to continue co-ed competition to the player. Experts say close attention during puberty is the key to making that decision.
"It matters a lot whether you are 150 pounds or 95. It's a simple law of physics, not gender," says Lisa Callahan, medical director at New York's Women's Sports Medicine Center. "There are girls and women who can play professional football, but there are girls and women who shouldn't be out there with someone who will potentially harm them."
She advocates upper-body weight training for females involved in co-ed contact sports to level the playing field.
Steve Stock, Nicole's dad, is keeping a close eye on the maturing boys who compete against his 100-pound daughter. She could "get killed," he fears.
"At the same time, I've got my 5-foot daughter playing goalie, and she was the game MVP the day she turned 13. We can't arbitrarily say, 'You're a girl. You're 13. You can't compete at this level anymore.' "
Stock's teammate, Gwen Coleman, plays a defensive position, which leaves her open to more physical pounding. "A lot of people think at (the 12-14 age bracket) a lot of girls get hurt. But what I've seen is if a girl gets hurt, it was from a cheap shot," Coleman says.
Rough times
Coleman says what drives girls out of the co-ed leagues are "boys who get so nasty to you. You're a target, and they head for you."
But she believes it's the parents, not the youngsters, who drive that mentality.
Stock has heard the "horror stories" at the older levels when "coaches tell them to go out and take the dirty shot at the girl."
Educating coaches is something Dale Pleimann, director at the Missouri State High School Activities Association, does every August, when athletic directors deal with girls who want to go out for football and wrestling.
Some parents and coaches complain that putting girls on a traditionally all-boys team creates a distraction and creates more work. Male players need to be taught new attitudes, and the girls need to be trained to tie shoes and wear equipment that the boys have grown up with.
"Many coaches aren't willing to take the time," says Mike Duroe, national developmental coach at USA Wrestling.
United effort
Perlmutter says despite her friends' warnings, her teammates have "befriended and applauded" her. When one school's principal and parents refused to allow their boys to compete against the girls, her entire team stepped out of the tournament. "If they were going to be so closed-minded, then they didn't deserve to be in our gym," she says. "We are all a unified front. We are a team."
It's the same for Pontuso at Blue Hills Regional High in Canton, Mass. Pontuso says her teammates share with her one of her fondest football memories: her first tackle. "It was freshman year, and it felt really good. My team was really, really proud of me. I can't even describe it, but it was the best moment!"
That attitude will help change the atmosphere of co-ed competition. "It's not going away," Pleimann says.
Says Duroe: "I understand that boys are apprehensive to grab hold of a girl; the more the coaches indicate it's OK, the more it will happen."
There is no heavy padding in wrestling uniforms to disguise drastically different physiques, and Duroe says many coaches fear sexual harassment suits.
But Duroe assures them there are no such cases on record with USA Wrestling.
"Boys are quite uncomfortable dealing with the chest, both the hesitation and the risk. You can't overlook it, but I don't spend a lot of time overfocusing on it either," says Jim Thrall, the coach of Perlmutter's wrestling team.
Her teammate, Danny Knight, says he isn't hesitant. "You can't go easy on the girl assuming that you're better than her. That's not fair," he says, before adding: "In all honesty, if the girl was real beautiful, it might be harder to slam her on the ground."
It's not the slamming that had Perlmutter's dad taken aback. It was watching boys lying on top of his daughter. "He had a sense of humor about it, but he said there was a part of him that wanted to rip that boy off her body," says Sally Hayman, Perlmutter's mom.
Rewarding experience
Many coaches say training girls has its rewarding upside: They're more focused and determined than the boys and push themselves harder in practice.
Stock's first coach chose her early in the team-forming process. "He said, 'Any girl that's out there to play hockey, it's because she wants to play, not because Daddy and Mommy want her to play,' " Stock says.
And while female athletes long to be considered a "player" in their chosen sport instead of the "girl player," they still want to keep in touch with their gender, says Lori Schmid, vice president of The Female Athlete, a catalogue and Web site that provides gear designed to fit the female figure.
While football and wrestling aren't yet featured, ice hockey ranks among the company's fastest growing lines. "We find the girls like to be feminine as well."
That femininity also requires a mind-change when it comes to locker rooms. Newer sports facilities are making accommodations for co-ed teams. But for now, most girls find themselves searching for places to dress for games.
Pontuso changes into her gear with the cheerleaders.
Coleman and Stock once changed in a chicken-wire closet behind a roll of artificial turf, with the opposing team within earshot behind a thin wall.
A thin wall with a gaping gash. "We'd plug the hole with a sock, they'd pull out the sock. They were so obnoxious," Coleman snipes, before adding sadly: "It threw us off our game."
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Women fight for respect in a combat sport Wrestlers pin hopes on entering 2004 Games
LAS VEGAS -- Gender stereotypes took a beating last weekend at the U.S. National Wrestling Championships.
Never mind the many guys sporting bleached-blond hair.
On the same mats, side-by-side with men's matches, women wrestled women.
They muscled for pins, wiped bloody noses and continued their arm-twisting campaign for acceptance in a combat sport.
"It's still an uphill battle for a lot of girls, but it's changing rapidly," says Tricia Saunders, three-time women's world champ, nine-time U.S. titlist and mother of two.
About 2,000 U.S. girls participate in high school wrestling, up from 200 a decade ago. Though some high schools are starting girls teams, most compete against boys.
Minnesota-Morris has the only U.S. women's college team. It schedules women's club teams and Canadian colleges with women's teams.
However, in recent years national tournaments for young women have been created by USA Wrestling, the national governing body.
U.S. senior-level national championships for women started in 1990. World championships began in the late '80s.
USA Wrestling's hopes for the big move: women's wrestling in the 2004 Olympics.
"We're very optimistic," says Mike Duroe, national freestyle developmental coach.
At the Las Vegas Convention Center, Rachel Salazar, 15, of Concord, Calif., wore a Rosie the Riveter T-shirt with the slogan, "We Can Do It!"
Salazar, one of three girls on an otherwise male high school team, placed fourth in the 101.25-pound class.
"It would be cool to have women's wrestling in the Olympics," she says.
For the 33-year-old Saunders, 2004 is likely too far away.
"I'll be 38. You can never say never, but it's not something I envision," Saunders says.
Wrestling up a weight class this year at 112.25 pounds, she won 3-0 in overtime in the final against Malissa Sherwood of Rocklin, Calif.
Saunders' grandfather was a Big Ten champ at Michigan. Her father wrestled. Her two brothers wrestled. Her husband, Townsend Saunders, was a 1996 Olympic silver medalist.
As a kid in Ann Arbor, Mich., she figured she wasn't old enough to wrestle like her older brother. When her younger brother got wrestling shoes, she said, "Hey, wait a minute."
"She said, 'Dad, why can't I do it?' " says her father, Jim McNaughton. "There really wasn't a good answer for it."
She began competing at age 8.
"She just took it to all of us," says childhood friend and wrestling foe Zeke Jones, a 1991 world champion.
"She was a year older, and in physical maturity it seemed like she was five years older. That, combined with technical skill, made for domination."
When girls wrestle boys, it often prompts debate about sexuality and safety.
Another is whether boys are stigmatized if they lose to a girl.
No problem for Jones.
"Tricia was my friend. More than that, she never lost to anybody. So if I lost all the time to Tricia, I'd still have a box full of silver medals because she won the golds," he says.
The 8-year-old Saunders won regional and district tournaments but wasn't allowed to compete in the state tournament because she was a girl.
Her family filed suit. The ruling came too late for state, but she was advanced to nationals, where as a 45-pounder she was fourth in freestyle and second in Greco-Roman (no holds below the waist).
In junior high and high school, officials wouldn't let her compete. "I don't think my parents were up for another lawsuit. At 12, I retired and went into gymnastics," she says.
She returned to the mat 10 years later in 1989 after college.
Her brother, Andy, was wrestling at Arizona State. Jones was also there, and Bobby Douglas was the coach.
"Zeke and Bobby told me they had seen women wrestling at the World Championships," she says. "I said, 'I think I want to wrestle.' "
She's the only U.S. woman to win a world title. She sat out '97 after knee surgery and the birth of a child and won her third world title last year.
Sixty women competed at Las Vegas in six weight classes.
Kristie Stenglein, 20, of Albany, N.Y., won her fourth U.S. title at 165.25 pounds, the heaviest women's class.
At the finals, Stenglein's daughter, Kayla, 1, wore a mini, red wrestling uniform.
Stenglein, three-time world silver medalist, is a student at Hudson Valley Community College. "I was in the paper. One of my teachers saw it and announced it to my class," she says. "The whole class flipped out. 'You wrestle?' "
Angela Hesener, a 101.25-pounder from Bethlehem, Pa., has encountered wisecracks when she says she wrestles.
" 'In mud or pudding?' That's the kind of questions we get," she says. "But it's a lot better than it used to be."
As a high school junior in Cleveland, Tina George was keeping the stats at a wrestling match when she saw a girl wrestling for the visitors.
She tried it as a senior, went on to wrestle at Minnesota-Morris and now is a 123.5-pounder with chiseled muscles.
"I'm only 5-foot. Sometimes people say, 'You're too short to be a wrestler.' Sometimes, older people say, 'That's not ladylike, not feminine," she says.
In the finals, George lost 2-1 in overtime to Stephanie Murata of Boca Raton, Fla., a four-time U.S. champ.
"Part of the reason I enjoy wrestling is it's so difficult," Murata says. "All the time and training we spend can effect you in a positive way. Not having that extra piece of bread, going the extra mile. That translates directly into life."
That's what you hear from the men, but there are differences.
"The women aren't as strong in the neck and shoulder areas," says Duroe, who's coached three women's world teams.
"Sometimes you see more moves up on the shoulder area that women use to score, where a guy can fight that."
But women have an edge.
"Some techniques guys use don't work on women because of their flexibility," Duroe says. "You can have their hips turned all the way over, but their chests are still on the mat."
Female wrestlers also cut weight. "But I think there's less of it in the women's division," says Joe Corso, who coached the last U.S. team at Worlds.
One factor: fewer weight classes, six for women compared to eight for men. But Corso says: "It seems to me women are smarter about it. They taper off."
Watching the women, you see matches delayed while they pull back their hair.
By rule, they must wear it pulled back. The refs, typically men, check it before matches.
"But refs don't know anything about ponytail technology," Saunders says.
And scrunchies come loose in the heat of battle.
Only a few wear headgear. You don't see women with the noticeable cauliflower ears like many men. But a few have a touch. "They'll probably wear their hair long," Saunders says.
Women also wear higher-cut singlets (the wrestling garb).
Some, like Saunders, have that same muscular wrestler's look in the arms and shoulders. They've got guns.
"Our top women are training now similar to the guys just in terms of intensity, strength training," Duroe says.
At Minnesota-Morris, Doug Reese coaches the men's and women's teams. He started the women's team in 1995 when the school was looking to add women's programs.
His pitch: "It was a lot cheaper to start women's wrestling. The facilities, the coaches were all there."
Reese hopes adding college women's programs will help achieve gender equity, a sore point in the wrestling community, where many college men's programs have been cut.
Duroe of USA Wrestling says: "It's certainly not our primary objective to try to stop men's programs from being dropped by adding women's. But we hope that as a result of starting women's programs, we increase interest in wrestling."
At first, at Minnesota-Morris, the teams practiced in the same room at the same time. But for two years, Reese split them.
"There wasn't respect between the programs," he says. "Guys who had been in the sport for years thought it was a joke that a girl could wrestle a couple of years and make the national team."
But they're back together.
"We're at the point where there is high regard and respect because of the technical skills the women have and what they've achieved," Reese says.
Trials are in June for the World Championships on Sept. 10-12 in Sweden.
The top three at the trials qualify for training stipends from USA Wrestling. It's $900 a month for the trials winner, same as for men. But women don't get free room and board at the USA Wrestling training center.
The USA has placed third in the world three years in a row. Last year, Russia won the team title. Japan won eight of nine years before that.
Townsend Saunders, who coaches his wife at Worlds, knows she probably won't get an Olympic shot.
"We're at the point where all of her hard work has come to pay off for girls in the future," he says. "It would be nice if she could participate. But that's all right. I think she's happy to make a difference in a lot of people's lives."
Their daughter Tassia, 4, and son Townsend, 21 months, wrestle each other. "The little boy is taking some lumps," Tricia says.
She favors separate wrestling programs for boys and girls.
"Mostly, girls can only compete at the lower weight classes with guys who haven't hit puberty yet," she says.
But if her children wrestle, her first hope is equal opportunity: "Hopefully, they're not going to have doors shut in their faces like I had as a kid."
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Girls wrestling grows into milestone event
High schools
Female wrestlers still are uncommon at the high school level but growing.
In 1990, 112 high school girls participated in wrestling, a figure that climbed to 1,629 last year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
One indicator of that growth is the first U.S. High School Girls Wrestling Association Tournament on Saturday and Sunday at Pioneer High in Ann Arbor, Mich.
The national girls-only event, featuring approximately 300 competitors, was the idea of Kent Bailo, a longtime NCAA Division II referee. Bailo's long-range goal is to help girls wrestling become popular enough to become a varsity sport, at least in certain states. He is inspired by the idea that girls are better off wrestling each other.
"I decided to organize this because I'd go places and see a girl or two on a team and they'd usually get beat up pretty badly," Bailo says. "And in the 5% where boys lose to girls, you've got 14-year-old boys who want to kill themselves (out of embarrassment)."
One of the stars of this weekend could be Julie Tucker of Pleasant Hill (Mo.). The 103-pound senior became the first girl in 66 years to qualify for the Missouri state wrestling meet.
"I wasn't a big proponent of girls wrestling, but Julie proved
me wrong," Pleasant Hill wrestling coach Steve Leslie says. "She's been a joy to have around."
Also competing is Lyniece McNair, a 137-pound senior at Arthur Hill (Saginaw, Mich.) who has been a member of the boys varsity wrestling team for three years.
McNair is 9-12 this season.
"I've had guys forfeit games and I've been in matches where the guy will be a lot more rough with me because of this fear of losing to a girl," McNair says. "But I think if you have a girl on your team, that fear goes away."
The continued growth of girls wrestling should continue to feed Bailo's event. This year several central Florida high schools, including many in Seminole County, allocated money and hired girls wrestling coaches.
Lyman (Longwood, Fla.) wrestling coach Marlo Miranda says female teams give an emerging generation of female wrestlers an option to join the boys team. And her girls love it. "Their enthusiasm has been above and beyond anything we expected," Miranda says.
Lyman wrestler Holly Haritan, a 130-pounder who was 16-0 this season, says, "Now that I've started, I never want it to end. I've played team sports, but this is so different -- much more intense."
