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Girls invading' male sports teams are winning respect
The San Diego
Union-Tribune
January 19, 1988, Tuesday
The bells ring, school is out for the day, and six
high school students rush to the girls' locker room at their respective
schools.
Jenni Toth of El Cajon Valley High and Alexia Stulz of
Madison don their wrestling singlets. El Cajon's Erin Beck and Tricia
Woodley
jump into swimsuits, and Stephanie Benway of San Marcos
and Mia Labowitz of San Diego High put on their football uniforms.
All six head to their respective gyms, pools or football
fields and join their male teammates. They are girls who compete on boys'
teams.
Toth jaunts into the Braves' wrestling room each day for
practice. She's a 5-foot-3, 112-pound freshman who looks like the
girl-next-door. She's not.
El Cajon Valley coach Jim Minor instructed 37 male
wrestlers and Toth to practice single-leg takedowns. Blond-haired, blue-eyed
Toth
walked up to teammate Brian Crain, and slapped him
upside the head. He was her practice partner/victim for the day.
As the team practiced, Toth had the time of her life at
Crain's expense.
She is also a judo expert, ranked No. 3 nationally for
112-pound, 14-year-old girls.
"It's hard wrestling with Jenni, because she throws me,"
Crain said. "She does her judo on me in practice, because she can't do it in
matches. That way, no one can disqualify her, so I get
the illegal judo stuff. It hurts."
Upon hearing Crain's comment, Toth protested.
"OK, Jenni, whatever you say, just don't throw me,"
Crain pleaded.
Toth broke out in laughter.
"I like beating guys," she said. "It feels good. I think
it's more satisfying than beating a girl. I think I have the advantage when
I wrestle a
guy. If I lose, it's no big deal, because it's only a
game to me. If the guy loses, it's like his whole world is over.
"I pinned a guy from another team this year, and I heard
his teammates threaten to put posters all over school. I don't think that's
right."
Her teammates share her perspective.
"Jenni wrestles with me, and it doesn't matter if she
beats me," said Doug Schulze. "If I get beat, I get beat. It means Jenni has
done her
job."
Other El Cajon wrestlers agree with Schulze.
"Outside the room, it's different, but inside Jenni is
just one of the guys," said varsity wrestler Arthur Sprecher. "We treat her
the same.
There are no breaks. She does the same things we have to
do. I think if Jenni pins a guy, it's because she's a good wrestler. If the
guy
cries, he should give up the sport."
One Braves wrestler who feels differently is junior
varsity teammate Frank Issa, who competes in the 98-pound class.
"She's pretty good," Issa said. "I still think it's
weird wrestling her because she's a girl. If I lose, I get cut down by the
rest of the team."
Toth, whose junior varsity record is 4-8, has worked
hard to prove herself.
"I go in front of Coach to do my push-ups so he knows I
am keeping up," Toth said. "I don't want people thinking I'm getting special
treatment because I'm a girl. I do everything the guys
do.
"I even wear the same outfit, but I wear a leotard
underneath, and I had to get my hair cut. It was really long, and now it's
really short.
"On the mat ... I'm just a wrestler. This isn't a
feminist thing, and I don't want any extra breaks. I'm out there because I
love the
competition."
At first, Minor was opposed to the idea of a girl on his
team.
"Some girls came out to lose weight, get in shape, or
just for the glory of saying they are on the boys' wrestling team," he said.
"This is a
violent sport. Jenni is here for the competition, and
she fits in with everyone. She's not as good as some, but she's better than
a lot.
"Like a lot of girls, she lacks upper-body strength, but
she makes up for it in her technique. She's an asset and I'm glad to have
her on the
team."
o o o
Stulz, a 5-7, 146-pound junior who wrestles in the
154-pound class, won one of her first three matches for the Madison junior
varsity.
"My brother first got me interested in wrestling," said
Stulz, 16. "When I joined the team, our varsity captain said, I don't want
you to
wrestle.' I went out and proved to him that I was good.
"My friends think it's pretty cool that I can wrestle
guys and win.
"Guys just trip when they find out they have to wrestle
a girl. The dude I wrestled from Montgomery wasn't expecting a girl. He
didn't
expect me to throw him, either."
At a recent JV tournament, Stulz was the only girl. She
pinned her opponent and caused a scene.
"All the wrestlers from 16 teams stood around my mat,"
Stulz said. "The people in the stands were cheering for me, and my friends
were
calling my name. It was funny because even his teammates
were cheering for me."
o o o
Beck is an El Cajon sophomore on the junior varsity
water polo team.
"At practice, I'm not a girl or a guy," Beck said. "I'm
just a team member. I don't get any privileges or benefits. I don't expect
them."
But Beck feels it is a definite advantage being a girl
on a boys' team.
"Guys slack off, and that leaves me open to score
goals," Beck said. "I'm not sure if they slack off because they're afraid of
me, or they
think I'm no good. Either way, it's fun."
Woodley, a member of the Braves' varsity squad, won
Grossmont League honorable-mention honors this past season. The senior was
team co-captain with goalie Andy Castonguay.
"At first, the guys weren't friendly, but they weren't
mean, either," Woodley said. "I earned their respect, and then I became one
of the
guys.
They became my brothers, talked about girls in front of
me, and told me dirty jokes.
"They would jump on anyone who was really rough with me.
They became really protective. We learned to trust and understood each
other."
Woodley improved through her four-year high school
career, and so did her leadership abilities.
"The guys sometimes looked to me to mediate situations,"
Woodley said.
"When they get upset, I'm there to calm them down. I
think boys get more frustrated with referees than girls do."
Coach Robin Sanchez depended on Woodley to maintain the
team's balance.
"Tricia is a pioneer," Sanchez said. "She's been a
backbone to this team, and I'm sorry to see her graduate."
o o o
Anyone is welcome to join the San Marcos football team.
Just ask freshman team coach Bruce Storrs. When wide receiver Benway
wanted to play, Storrs had no objection.
"At first, it was a novelty having a girl on the team,"
Storrs said. "Once we got going, Stephanie blended in with everyone else.
She didn't
stand out because she was a girl."
Storrs maintained tough practices, and Benway stayed
with the program.
"The main thing I asked of her was to contribute to the
team, and she did," Storrs said. "She has good speed, and she's a good
athlete. I
think she's faster than some of the guys."
Benway, 5-5 and 125 pounds, was willing to take her
share of hits.
"The guys weren't all that nice to me," she said. "They
treated the guys like guys, but they tried to hit me extra-hard. A lot of
guys think I
don't belong out there. They say, Why don't you go out
for a girls' sport, because you don't know how to play football.' I don't
care what
they think. I made the team, and I'm going to play next
year, too.
"I love football and I'm going to try to play pro ball.
We all have dreams, and that's mine. I want to dedicate my life to it, and
that's been
my goal since the third grade. If people want to think
things about me, let them."
Storrs was willing to give Benway the benefit of the
doubt.
"There were three occasions where Stephanie got her
socks knocked off," Storrs said. "I was waiting to see if she would get up
and how
she would take it. She got up and stepped back in there.
She took it like a guy. I was proud of her, and I know the players respected
her
efforts."
o o o
When the San Diego High varsity football team suits up,
it's impossible to tell the Cavers' place-kicker is a girl.
"I look the same in uniform," said Labowitz, a junior.
"Maybe the only way you could tell is by the way I stand."
Labowitz made eight of nine extra-point kicks last
season, including a 32-yard field goal. She helped the Cavers (1-9) to a 7-2
victory
over St. Augustine.
"The pressure on her is a lot higher," said San Diego
coach Bill Williams.
"I don't care what anyone says, because it's tough to
stand on the sidelines knowing you'll only be out there a couple of times."
Labowitz also competes in soccer and track and maintains
a 3.33 grade-point average.
"I think Mia is an example in terms of productivity,"
Williams said. "She excels in everything she does. In football, she doesn't
get special
treatment from the team except to change in the girls'
locker room."
Labowitz (5-8, 140) enjoys her position.
"I like being one of the guys," she said, "but I don't
act like a jock. I go to school and I do sports. That's how I see it.
"I think the guys respect me, but sometimes they forget
I'm around. They talk about things most girls don't hear. I shouldn't be
hearing
those things, but it's fun. Any girl would be surprised
if she heard guy-talk.
Sometimes, they're worse than girls."
January 23, 1996
-------------------------------------------------
GIRL GRAPPLER DIDN'T MAKE LINEUP BUT WON HER POINT
Los Angeles Times
January 5, 1987, Monday,
Kerry Hanley said right up front that her bid to
become the first girl on a San Diego high school wrestling team was no
publicity stunt.
That was in November, 1985, when the 4-foot-11, 93-pound
sophomore asked the San Diego Unified School District to change its policy
and allow girls on boys' football and wrestling teams.
"I like to wrestle," she said then. "I like the sport."
The school board's three women outvoted its two men, and
Hanley won the right to go to the mat with Mira Mesa High School's boys.
But the real test came when the last TV cameras had
withdrawn and the reporters had stopped calling. Was Hanley going to stick
with it
or was she simply trying to get her name in the
newspaper?
"Last year, she stuck with it," said wrestling coach Jon
Talbott. "She finished the season with us. She never ended up wrestling a
match for
us, but she was out there trying to make the lineup."
It wasn't always easy. Mira Mesa Principal Jim Vlassis
said plainly that she didn't belong in the sport. Talbott seemed more
resigned than
enthusiastic about his new wrestler. Some of her
teammates also expressed their feelings about her presence in their midst.
"Some of the guys on the team didn't like it," Hanley,
now 16, remembered last week. "Most of them changed their minds, but some of
them didn't. They would just say things and that made me
more determined."
She said there were the usual "snide comments: 'Why are
you doing this? You don't belong here.' "
But Hanley kept showing up, and acceptance came
gradually from most of her peers.
"They were reluctant," she said. "I can imagine what
they were thinking when they got paired up with me: 'Oh, God, I've got to
wrestle a
girl.' But as soon as they understood I wasn't going to
give in to them, they just treated me like anyone else."
Or mistreated her like anyone else.
"They treated her as just one of the guys," Talbott
said. "She put up with a 'crossface,' where you get hit across the face. And
you're going
to get grabbed almost everywhere.
"I think that's what probably kept her on an equal basis
with some of the guys: she took whatever came along and that made the guys a
little less apprehensive about throwing her down, or
bumping into her or whatever else."
Hanley's pioneering never earned her big-league
celebrity status because her request to join a boys' contact sport team was
not
unprecedented. In other parts of the county and across
the nation, girls had fought -- and won -- the right to wrestle and play
football.
And on Dec. 30, she was completely overshadowed when
America Morris, a 108-pound sophomore who had joined Clairemont High's
wrestling team after Hanley opened the door, pinned a
boy in varsity competition.
That feat, perhaps the first ever by a girl in American
high school athletics, brought international publicity to Morris and
Clairemont High. It
earned her a spot on the "Tonight" show, where she
demonstrated her wrestling moves for Johnny Carson.
Hanley, who wasn't even good enough to earn a spot on
the junior varsity, read about Morris' accomplishment and wrote her a
letter. "I
said, 'I'd like to talk to you because you're doing the
same things I'm doing,' " she said.
The two became friends, and they sometimes double-dated.
Hanley said she doesn't begrudge Morris, also 16 now,
the attention. She hadn't tried out for the wrestling team because she
wanted to be
a trailblazer, but looking back, she is proud that she
did it.
"I never wanted any credit for being the first girl, but
I got it and it was kind of nice," she said. "But then again, it was kind of
a pain.
"It was nice that people cared enough to say something
about it. But I felt that I had no privacy and I always had to be on my
guard with
people. People would come up to me and say things to me,
and I didn't even know them."
Other girls followed Hanley's lead. According to
Talbott, girls joined wrestling teams at University City High, Madison High,
Torrey Pines
High, Fallbrook High and Escondido High. A second girl
joined Morris on the Clairemont High team.
So far, no girl has gone out for a city high school
football squad, said Wayne DeBate, the district's manager of secondary
athletics.
DeBate, one of the people who is still uncomfortable
with girls' participation in boys' contact sports, doesn't anticipate a huge
increase in
the number of females seeking spots as wrestlers or
running backs.
Vlassis, the Mira Mesa High principal, hasn't changed
his mind either. Despite Hanley's year on the mats, he maintains that it's
too easy for
a girl to get hurt.
"She's a neat little gal," Vlassis said, "but she still
doesn't belong out there."
Hanley went out for wrestling again this winter, but
quit when a school play took up too much of her time. She promises to be
back in the
wrestling room again after Christmas vacation. Talbott
said she will have a tough job catching up with competitors who have been
training
for nearly a month.
But Hanley believes she has nothing to prove to anyone.
"I don't really think about it that way," she said. "The
thing I think about last year is the shape I was in. I was in the best shape
I was ever
in. And now I look at myself and I say, 'I want to be in
that kind of shape again.' " LEONARD BERNSTEIN
----------------------
Wrestling: Girls make the cut
The San Diego
Union-Tribune
February 20, 1986, Thursday
Seventeen-year-old Michelle Wadley's silky blonde
ponytail and 14-year-olSally Corran's curly dark-brown locks kept them from
taking to the wrestling mat in their precedent-setting
first season.
But the two Torrey Pines High School junior varsity
wrestlers say last night's season-ending match against Orange Glen High
School of
Escondido was the last time the duo will sit on the
sidelines because of their hair.
"Next year I'm going to cut my hair in a bob and then
put it up in curlers the night before a meet so it won't touch my neck,"
said Wadley, a
hazel-eyed former cheerleader. "I'm definitely going to
compete."
The board of trustees of the San Dieguito Union High
School District in December revised its athletic policy to allow girls to
participate in
football and wrestling. At the time, Superintendent
William Berrier said no girls had asked to join either of the teams, but
suggested the
board reword its policy before the subject became
"emotional." Torrey Pines High School, in Del Mar, is in the San Dieguito
district.
San Dieguito joins school districts in Fallbrook,
Grossmont and San Diego in opening the door to girls in interscholastic
wrestling and
football.
As more girls are given the go-ahead by local school
boards to join formerly all-male wrestling teams, the female athletes are
finding that
they have to grapple with more than just taboos,
conservative critics and skeptical parents.
The California Interscholastic Federation rulebook says
that a wrestler's hair cannot be lower than the nape of the neck, and
"foreign
objects" such as hair nets, rubber bands, or barrettes
are a no-no during competition, Coach Ron Morris said.
"It may sound like it is designed to keep girls out of
wrestling, but someone really could have an unfair advantage or get
scratched if a girl
was wearing something in her hair," Morris said.
Though Wadley and Curran were not ready to trim their
locks this season, a third teammate was.
Sixteen-year-old Leisa Smith, said the decision to chop
off her shoulder-length blonde hair was easy. She said the decision was
practically
made for her when she went to a match expecting to P
compete against Fallbrook High School and was told she was ineligible
because of
her long hair.
"I was ready to go and they (referees) said no because
my hair was too long," Smith recalled. "I was so mad, I almost cut my hair
off right
there."
Though she has yet to win a contested match in
sanctioned competition, Smith scored two points against a male opponent this
month, her
best effort yet. Last night, she won by forfeit when an
Orange Glen wrestler refused to compete against her.
The trio agrees that audiences are becoming more
accustomed to seeing girls competing at wrestling meets, but each says she
has
encountered prejudice.
"I went to one meet and before it started I was just
being friendly and I walked up to the coach of the other team and asked
where their
girl (wrestler) was," Wadley said. "He just looked at me
and said, Home cooking and cleaning where a woman should be.' He was really
hostile."
Smith and Corran say they sometimes get "dirty looks" at
meets and on campus, and admit they are often unsure just exactly what their
classmates think about them.
"It's serious stuff -- you have to be strong and
aggressive to survive out there," Smith said. "But there'll probably be more
girls next year
and that will make it a little bit easier on everyone."
