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TERRY DUENNES/The Post
St. Bernard High School senior Sarah Van Skaik, the first female wrestler in Ohio to qualify for a district wrestling tournament, works out with Mike Hooker. She is among about one dozen female wrestlers on varsity teams in Ohio.
Grappling with coed wrestling
Let girls choose, some schools say
Post staff report
It's a headlock, body slam, takedown of an issue to grapple with.
Coed wrestling.
Should high school boys be tangling with high school girls in the ultimate contact sport?
The referee is still out.
'I am not in favor of it,' says Dr. James Bilbo of Northern Kentucky Sports Medicine. 'The difference in muscles and strength between boys and girls makes it too much of a risk that girls will be injured.'
Counters Norwood High School Athletic Director Steve Zimmerman, '"If girls are willing to go through what the guys go through, I don't have a problem with it. Girls should have the opportunity to wrestle.' A small, but growing, number of girls are wrestling against boys in sanctioned high school competition.
The National Federation of State High School Associations says the number of female high school wrestlers increased from six in the 1984-85 school year to 1,900 in 1997-98. However, that's still very few compared to 229,000 boys.
When there aren't enough girls to form all-girl teams, girls can join boys' teams under provisions of the federal government's Title IX equal-opportunity provisions for athletes.
Greater Cincinnati boasted its own female wrestling star this season when St. Bernard High School senior Sarah Van Skaik became the first female in Ohio to qualify for a district wrestling tournament. A week ago, Ms. Skaik lost in the district's first round in Xenia, Ohio. But that has not discouraged the budding star who plans to wrestle in college and has been recruited by Cumberland College in Williamsburg, Ky.
'When I wrestle, I focus on winning,' said Ms. Van Skaik. 'I get so into it that I really don't think about the fact I'm wrestling a guy.'
Ohio High School Athletic Association Assistant Commissioner Deborah Moore says about a dozen girls wrestle on varsity teams in the state.
'If a girl has the interest and ability, our rules permit it,' she said. 'It's a good thing for girls to be able to participate in sports they are truly interested in.
'But, we're not making any social statement on the appropriateness of girls wrestling. We simply are not going to get into the social side of it.'
Social? How about sexual?
'In wrestling, you constantly have your hands on your opponent,' notes Bilbo, who wrestled in high school and college. 'And, quite frankly, you're handling the private parts of your opponent on a regular basis.
'Having been a wrestler, it's hard for me to be comfortable with the physical contact between boys and girls. There's a legitimate concern about the privacy of guys and girls.
'The intimacy of the physical contact in wrestling is something you can't disregard. Granted, women's groups can say they don't care about that and I don't want to sound sexist, but modesty has got to come into play somewhere.'
Bilbo says if girls want to wrestle, there should be separate female leagues. The problem is, in most places there aren't enough female wrestlers to make that practical.
'Our bylaws permit girls to participate on boys teams if there's no girls team in that sport or if overall opportunities for girls are less than boys,' says Ms. Moore, of the state athletic association.
However, a girl needs to completely understand what she's getting into before she wrestles boys and her parents must approve, notes Ms. Moore.
'There are consequences to this,' she says. 'From the parents' point of view, there may be fear of inappropriate touching.
'It's important that school administrators emphasize the consequences to girls to ascertain if they are truly interested in the sport. Those decisions need to be made by parents, students and professional personnel at schools.'
And how about a boy who finds out his opponent is a girl?
'Ultimately, it's harder on the boy than the girl,' contends Zimmerman, the Norwood High School athletic director.
'You must consider the emotional state of any boy who would have to wrestle against a girl. It's a no-win situation for the boy. If he beats her, he was supposed to. If he loses, he'll have a hard time living it down.'
Some boys refuse to wrestle a girl. Twice this season, boys declined to go against Ms. Van Skaik.
'That's fine. They forfeit,' said Ms. Moore. 'Losing to a girl could embarrass them. Certainly, they might be ridiculed by other boys.'
While Bilbo says he would have been 'very uncomfortable' wrestling a girl in high school, he maintains that the chief reason he opposes coed wrestling is for safety's sake.
'What bothers me the most is the difference in strength and development at that age,' he says. 'Certainly there's a range of physical abilities of both boys and girls, but generally speaking, high school boys are going to put high school girls at risk if they wrestle them.'
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Sarah Van Skaik plans to major in biology when she enrolls at Cumberland College in the fall, but she might be more qualified for history, since she just made some of her own.
Van Skaik, a senior at St. Bernard-Elmwood Place High School, became the first girl to qualify for a district tournament in Ohio when she pinned Clinton-Massie's Bobby McCall in the consolation semifinals of the Division III sectional wrestling tournament Saturday. The Ohio High School Athletic Association has been sponsoring wrestling tournaments for 61 years.
Van Skaik will compete starting Friday at Xenia High School.
Only about a dozen girls wrestled on varsity teams last season, according to Bob Goldring, director of information services for the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA). The OHSAA won't have figures for this season until completing a survey in the spring, Goldring added.
“I was so excited when I won the match,” the 18-year-old Van Skaik said. “Ever since I started wrestling, I've wanted to go to the districts, so I was real excited. The last couple of years, I've come really close.”
To make history, Van Skaik had a lot of it to overcome. McCall had beaten her twice, including by pin earlier this season, third-year Titans coach Paul Finkes said.
This time, with the score tied, 2-2, in the second period, Van Skaik put McCall in a half nelson.
“The place erupted. It was exciting. People were yelling, "Pin him, pin him.' It took her about 10 or 15 seconds.”
Other than participating in a sport usually reserved for males, Van Skaik, in the 160-pound weight class, is the average high school senior, according to senior teammate Mike Hooker, who also qualified at 112 pounds. Her best friend, Finneytown High School senior Abby Edwards, agrees.
“She's always been athletic,” Edwards said about Van Skaik. They've been friends since elementary school.
“When she went into wrestling in (seventh grade), it was something really different. There weren't too many people who agreed with it. But as she proved she could do it, everybody became more accepting of it, and the more success she has, the more people grow to accept it.”
Van Skaik admits some boys she wrestles still have problems with the concept, especially if she beats them.
“Some of the people give me reactions that are really stupid,” she said. “I understand, but it still bothers me.”
McCall wasn't one of them, she and Finkes added.
“He was obviously disappointed, but you would be, too, if you'd gotten knocked out of the tournament,” Finkes said. “He was just upset about losing the match. When he came over and shook my hand, he just said, "She's a good wrestler.'”
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Somebody chicken wing-me into the 20th century, before it becomes the 21st. Convince me that if I don't think a girl wrestling a boy is a great idea, then it's my problem, not the girl's.
Tell me it's perfectly sporting to have 16-year-old girls and boys groping, er, grappling, for five or six minutes straight, in the name of “opportunity.”
Tell me how the boy feels when he loses.
Or even if he wins.
How does he win?
If he beats the girl, he's supposed to. If he doesn't, he's laughed at for days. That's not me talking. It's society.
This is a battleground for two of the touchy-feeliest topics of our time. In this corner, Opportunity. In that corner, Self Esteem.
When girls wrestle boys, how do you satisfy both?
I wrestled a lot of years. I never saw a girl on a wrestling team. If a girl stood across the circle from me, I don't know how I'd feel. Tentative, probably. Queasy, definitely. I'm thinking, what do I do now?
A question of contact
This isn't football. It's not block and tackle, stick and move. It's not basketball, soccer or tennis. It's six minutes of nearly nonstop contact. There's nothing else like it.
So ... where can I touch? Is a high crotch ride OK? Lots of pinning moves mean chest-on-chest contact. Do I avoid those? Do I use cradles instead?
These aren't silly questions. They don't paint you as an out-of-touch Cro Magnon. They're likely the wonders invading the head of every guy who ever wrestled a girl.
It's funny. We allow a lot of things on the fields and in the gyms that we'd be punished for anywhere else. Berate a co-worker or a customer the way a college basketball coach berates a referee and you're planning new career moves by 4:30.
The things that happen on a football field or a hockey rink would be grounds for assault charges just about anywhere else.
We make allowances. But this?
Sarah Van Skaik, the senior at St. Bernard-Elmwood Place High, wrestles today in the district tournament. Good for her. Wrestling teaches self-discipline and mental toughness and accountability. There's nobody to blame (or praise) but you.
When wrestling isn't demanding that wrestlers lose excessive weight, it's a noble sport. For Van Skaik to succeed under all those conditions, plus the added, obvious one, she must be very special.
But I see her wrestle a guy and I think it's wrong.
A high school coach in town told me Thursday he had a wrestler not long ago who “toyed” with his female opponent. He got way ahead on points, then his concentration shifted from wrestling moves to moves of another sort. Do we really need this? It's an athletic contest, not a drive-in movie.
You could say the kid was a knucklehead. You could also say he should never have gotten that chance.
Sex bias like race bias?
Dexter Carpenter had four girls on his team at Northwest High this winter. His wife was a state women's champion at 135 pounds a year after having a baby. Carpenter asks, “When do we teach males to work with females in the workplace? Isn't this doing that? Our (male wrestlers) are the most well-adjusted guys around.”
Carpenter, who is black, is a long-time supporter of girls wrestling. He wrestled at all-white Deer Park High in the 70s, where he says he was not well received on the wrestling team. “I beat out a senior captain. If my pigmentation didn't tick them off, that did,” he said.
Carpenter feels Van Skaik and other girls are tarred by the same broad brush. He has a point. But here's another: If girls want to wrestle, great. Let them wrestle other girls.
Meanwhile, good luck to Sarah. Hopefully in college she won't have the notoriety or the controversy she has now. She's going to Cumberland College in Kentucky. They have a women's wrestling team there.
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Boys wrestle reality: a girl
By Dave Lance
DAYTON DAILY NEWS
Anyone fearing for Bobby McCall's well-being these days can relax. The Clinton-Massie High School wrestler is not losing any sleep and he's not in need of a psychiatrist.
Just because he lost to St. Bernard-Elmwood Place High School's Sarah Van Skaik in the 160-pound consolation semifinals of the Lakota Division III Sectional last week--making Van Skaik the first girl to qualify for a district tournament in Ohio--McCall isn't convinced his life is over.
But being pinned by Van Skaik in two minutes and 30 seconds has made him famous.
"That's what everybody's been telling me," said McCall, a junior. "She knew what she was doing and she got me. That's life.
"But it makes me look at girls differently. I respect them."
It's not as though McCall is Van Skaik's first victim. She enters the district meet, which begins at 3 p.m. today at Xenia High School, with a 7-14 record. And Van Skaik, a senior, is more experienced than McCall, a second-year wrestler.
Van Skaik has wrestled since seventh grade.
"She wrestled him tough," Clinton-Massie coach Dan McSurley said. "I think his nerves affected him, the fact everyone in the building was pulling for her."
If Van Skaik places in the top three at district, she will qualify for the state meet next week in Columbus. She will wrestle Sidney Lehman's Nate Johnston, a 1997 state qualifier, in the first round.
Johnston and Lehman coach Robert Boller have no problem with Johnston wrestling Van Skaik, but Springfield Catholic Central school officials held a meeting Thursday to decide if their 160-pound wrestler, Dave Lohrer, would forfeit a match against her.
Van Skaik could meet Lohrer in the consolation round. Catholic Central athletic director Kevin Kohls said officials decided to allow Lohrer to wrestle Van Skaik.
"We're very realistic," St. Bernard coach Paul Finkes said. "Her chances are not that great of going much farther, but she's going to give it her best shot, no matter what.
"Usually the boys are stronger than her, but she never gives up and she (beat McCall) by sheer dedication."
Van Skaik's only goal all along was to qualify for district.
"I've wanted to go (to district) for four years and I finally get to go," Van Skaik said. "I was actually on my back and I just did whatever I could do. I needed to move my hips and I tried rolling.
"It worked and he ended up on his back."
And that's when her popularity skyrocketed. As of Wednesday, Van Skaik said, two newspaper stories had been written about her and she had been featured on television three times.
"It's been pretty overwhelming," Van Skaik said. "Our school is pretty small. Anything that happens, everyone knows. They announced (the sectional results) at school and everybody was happy for me."
Including her parents, who weren't completely gung-ho about their daughter wrestling in the beginning.
"They were fine with it--sort of," Van Skaik said. "Now they go to all my meets and they're like the loudest people. I can hear my coach, but I hear my parents above him."
She might not hear McCall Friday, but he promises to be in attendance, cheering for Van Skaik. The two have formed a bond, having wrestled three times this season, with McCall winning twice.
"I wish her the best of luck," McCall said. "People kind of joke with me about (losing to her), especially my friends. I just tell them, `She would have done the same to you.'"
