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PREP BEAT -- ROOSEVELT GIRL PINS CONVENTION --
BERGSMA RELISHES ROLE AS WRESTLER IN METRO

The Seattle Times

January 10, 1995,
Tuesday, Final Edition

The question momentarily startled Marci Bergsma.

"Are you a good wrestler?"

Seldom does anyone inquire about Bergsma's skills on the
mat. She is one of two girls on the Roosevelt wrestling team and one of
three
in the Metro League.

Most folks dwell on gender, treating it and Bergsma as
some sort of puzzle needing to be solved.

"Most people want to know why," Bergsma said. "I can
understand that. I get it all the time."

Her reasons for wrestling with the boys are simple - she
can't play basketball.

"I was going to try out for basketball, but I (was not
good)," she said. "My friend Jill (Morthland) wrestled for Hale and I
thought it would
be a challenge."

The boys aren't that tough, Bergsma said. They are
bigger, stronger and faster, but they can be beaten.

And when Bergsma wins, she secretly laughs - real hard.

"I like to wrestle guys more than girls," said the
15-year-old Bergsma. "Especially when you pin those guys and make them cry .
. . I love
it.

"They get all mad like it's not supposed to happen. But
sometimes it happens."

It has happened four times during her two-year career at
Roosevelt, where she has compiled a 9-5 record. This season, she has
wrestled
in two Roughrider varsity meets, against Lake Washington
and Kamiak.

"I got wiped out," Bergsma said with a grin. "But that's
OK."

Anne Klien, a junior, was the first female to join the
Roosevelt wrestling team three years ago.

"They are bucking the trend," Roosevelt Coach Len
Jacobsen said. "Ninety percent of the boys in our school won't come out for
wrestling
because it's too hard. That says a lot for these girls."

Said teammate Brian Bush: "I don't think there's been
any hindrance since the girls have been on the team. . . . It's more of a
family thing."

"They don't worry about grabbing us in the wrong place
or anything like that," Bergsma said. "It's cool. We see each other at our
worst,
when we're sweaty, dirty and grungy. We just wrestle."
Coaches' woes

Metro wrestling coaches, in addition to the athletes,
are appearing on the disabled list.

O'Dea Coach Jeff Anderson suffered a pulled quadriceps
while participating in wrestling drills with the Irish. He walks with the
aid of a
brace and will miss practice for the next four to six
weeks.

Roosevelt Coach Len Jacobsen recently suffered a black
eye in practice.

"It's a tough sport," Anderson said, "and not just for
the kids."
Gayles likes it hot

It didn't take Kennedy running back Leland Gayles long
to warm up to the idea of playing football for the University of Arizona.

Gayles visited Arizona, Stanford and Northwestern, but
didn't bother looking any further. He canceled trips to Washington and UCLA
and
made his oral commitment to the Wildcats at the end of
last month. Arizona's warm weather was a major factor.

"It's hot all year round," Gayles said. "I like the
players on the team and I think it's a good opportunity to play, too, for a
young back."

One of Gayles' cousins, Darryl Lewis, played cornerback
for Arizona in the late 1980s.

Gayles, also one of the state's top sprinters, has been
bothered the past two seasons by a badly pulled leg muscle and said
Arizona's warm
weather should help.

"I think the cold (weather here) hurt me," he said.
"Whenever it got cold, I started feeling it (the pull) a lot more. Going
where it's hot, I
think I'll be OK."
Oh, no - not overtime

Don't say overtime around Cleveland, especially not when
Eagle boys basketball coach Calvin Johnson is near.

"We've got to learn how to finish and put teams away,"
Johnson said after the Eagles dropped their second overtime game to Ballard
last
week. They lost by two points against No. 2 Garfield on
Dec. 13.

In both games, Cleveland squandered fourth-quarter leads
and fizzled in the extra period.

"We've got to learn that when we're ahead, we don't have
to shoot," Johnson said. "We've got to find something to get us over the
hump.
We're not playing to look good or stay close. These are
games that we should win."
Notes

-- Franklin is one of two schools in the state that has
a boys and girls basketball team in The Seattle Times' Top 10. The Quaker
boys are
third in the state and the girls are eighth. Mead of
Spokane has a girls team ranked second and its boys are eighth.

-- Last week, the Ingraham girls basketball team lost
69-9 to Lakeside, but two days later scored a season-high 70 points against
winless
Cleveland for its first win of the season.

-------------------------------------

A FIRST: GIRLS GET THEIR OWN TOURNEY --
COMPETITION ADDRESSES WRESTLING'S NEW ORDER

The Seattle Times

December 11, 1994,

AUBURN - Aleshia Knipschield has been asked the question
a thousand times, or seemingly so: Why does a girl wrestle?

Her answer is always the same: Because her heart craves
it.

"I can't stand to not wrestle. It is so much fun and
challenging," Knipschield said yesterday after her second and final match in
the girls
portion of the Auburn Invitational at Auburn High
School. She won both matches despite a shoulder injury.

It was billed as the state's first wrestling tournament
for girls.

"We had 22 girls; 35 matches were wrestled," said Scott
Bliss, tournament director and Auburn High School coach. "We presented it as
a
real low-key affair, kind of an exhibition-type thing.
It's been successful. I was hoping we'd get more than 10. I see it growing
into a much
larger tournament next year."

Bliss said there is considerable interest in the sport,
especially at national and international levels.

"If you've got 22 girls who want to wrestle, there's no
reason, in several years, why we couldn't see it at a state level," Bliss
said.

Knipschield, a sophomore at Auburn High, has been
wrestling two years, mostly against boys. That means she doesn't wrestle
often
because boys don't like to wrestle girls, she said.

"Guys say the reason they're afraid to wrestle girls is
you lose either way. You're a bully because you beat a girl or you're a wimp
because
she beat you. So they don't want to wrestle," she said.

"I don't understand it. To me it's no big deal. But to
somebody else, it might not be. If they beat me, they beat me," she said.

Despite being a girl in a sport dominated by boys, she
says she is just another face in the crowd of students at Auburn.

"A lot of them don't even know I wrestle," she said.
"When they find out they get this shocked look on their face. They don't
expect
somebody like me to be a wrestler. They expect somebody
who is bigger and more burly looking, I guess, and maybe with shorter hair."

Knipschield doesn't match any of those characteristics.
She isn't burly, she wrestles at 101 pounds, and her long hair is tucked
under a cap
when she competes. In two years her record is 5-4,
including two victories over boys, one of them a pin. She says her teammates
consider
her good, but she doesn't. "I think they compare me with
the way they expect a girl to wrestle," she said.

Knipschield said her boyfriend, Jake Nannery, helped
persuade her to wrestle. Nannery wrestles at 122 pounds. "I wanted to be the
manager so I could watch him," she said. "For some
reason, it struck me as fun. I wanted to do it, so I did. I had trouble with
one of my
coaches last year who did not want a girl on the team.
But my head coach said, 'If you want to wrestle, you can wrestle.' '

Rachel Lang, a sophomore from Blaine, said she has met
similar resistance or, as she termed it, lack of cooperation among some
wrestling
people. She also has met considerable physical
opposition as she has progressed through school. She began wrestling nine
years ago after
she was picked on by a bully - a girl.

"I did really well in elementary school and middle
school," Lang said. "Now, since I'm in the upper weight classes, I'm not
doing too well
because they (boys) are really big, strong guys. They
are toned." She wrestles at 158.

"If I was better than they were in skill, they'd still
muscle me. They sit on me and I'll die because they are so heavy. I don't
win that many
matches against guys," she said.

Knipschield hopes to improve enough to reach her goal of
competing in the boys state tournament, before she graduates from Auburn.

"I think I'll probably have some complications getting
there, but that's a major goal I have set for myself and I'm going to work
until I
accomplish it," she said. She also wants to pursue a
scholarship at a college that has women's wrestling and she would like to
promote
women's participation in the sport.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

CHSAA ends ban to keep girls off wrestling teams

Denver Rocky Mountain News

February 1, 1994, Tuesday

Brighton wrestling coach Tom Cortez doubts if there
are any girls who can make his wrestling team.

''But, girls will be allowed to try out next year,''
said Cortez, who coaches Class 6A's top-ranked team. ''And, if they win
their challenge
matches, then they'll be allowed on our teams just like
the boys.''

The Colorado High School Activities Association's Board
of Control passed a CHSAA Gender Rule and Litigation amendment Thursday
allowing girls to participate in wrestling.

The previous article had stated, ''Whenever the school
provides only a team or teams for boys in a particular sport, girls are
permitted to
qualify for the student team(s), with the exception of
wrestling.''

The exception has been deleted.

Last year, the proposal was soundly defeated at the
Board's semi-annual meeting. But because of court cases from parents and
girls, who
wish to participate in wrestling, the proposal easily
passed this time around.

Bill Reader, an assistant CHSAA commissioner, has served
one year on the national high school rules wrestling committee. He said
other
members of the national committee were surprised
Colorado hadn't passed this proposal before. About 30 states allow girls to
wrestle on
teams with boys.

''Bob Davis from Hanford, Calif., is a coach on the
national committee,'' Reader said. ''He said the question of girls wrestling
is an adult
problem, but the kids handle it on an honorable basis.''

California has more than 200 girls wrestling. Following
the regular state championships, the girls have their own tournament. It has
not been
sanctioned by the California high school associations
but could be in the near future.

Reader said CHSAA has been getting three to five
inquiries a year about girls wrestling. But when told the rules didn't allow
for it, no one
has pursued it.

''Now, they can wrestle,'' Reader said. ''A girl who is
willing to go through three weeks of practice and the elimination match
procedure to
make the team is going to be respected by her peers. She
will less likely be put in a compromising situation.''
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Girls' wrestling fund-raiser shot down by principals

The San Diego Union-Tribune

September 27, 1988, Tuesday

Prep fund-raisers rarely are controversial, but l,
but emotions continue high at Valhalla and Monte Vista high schools after
the
cancellation of a wrestling fund-raiser.

For the past two years, the Norsemen and Monarchs have
co-sponsored a girls' wrestling tournament involving approximately 20
participants from each school. The tournament's purpose
was to raise money for the schools' boys' wrestling teams.

The decision to cancel the event was made Feb. 3 by the
Principals Council of the Grossmont Union High School District.

Those in favor of the event hoped the decision would be
overturned by the new principals at the two schools. It wasn't.

"This activity went from an intramural recreational
fund-raiser to an intense, unacceptable, negative situation," said Dr. Bob
King, associate
superintendent of the Grossmont Union High School
District. "It has lost its perspective and original intent."

"It was not a positive contest," said first-year Monte
Vista principal Gerry Gordinier, a former vice principal at the school.
Gordinier
succeeded Chris Bogden, who became an assistant
superintendent for the Chittenden Central School District in Vermont.

"It had the roller-derby and mud-wrestling mentality,"
Gordinier said.
"People came to see girls tear each other apart. It drew
an aggressive, unruly crowd, and male cheerleaders did some gross things. It
got
to be a spectacle."

Bogden, contacted by telephone yesterday, concurred.

"There were two shows, one on the mat and one above the
mat ... a wrestling match and a shouting match," he said. "One school was
verbally slamming the other with disparaging remarks."