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By DANNY SCHUMACHER, Special to The Times
1/9/2000
Laura Felix of Calabasas High has placed no worse than fourth at boys' wrestling tournaments this year, but Saturday she discovered that other girls are as tough.
Felix combined with Suzanne Kivi of Reno and Sarah FulpAllen of Half Moon Bay in the 104-pound division to highlight the first Thousand Oaks girls' wrestling tournament at Westlake High.
Each displayed impressive repertoires.
Kivi, a girls' national champion who has wrestled for five years, pinned FulpAllen in the second round of the championship match and was selected most valuable wrestler.
Felix, a sophomore, was penalized for using an illegal move and was pinned by FulpAllen in the semifinal. She finished third.
"I'm disappointed, but I'm mostly disappointed that I was pinned," Felix said. "Everything I did she was able to counter."
There was no disappointments for tournament director Shannon Yancey of Thousand Oaks.
Yancey, a four-time silver medalist at the women's wrestling world championships, had hoped the tournament would validate girls' wrestling, which is not yet a sanctioned high school sport.
She was happy with the outcome.
Seventy-nine wrestlers competed in 12 weight classes and medals were awarded to the top three finishers in each class.
"I was hoping for 70 girls and I got exactly that plus a little more," Yancey said. "I got some good competitors, not just beginners. Each year I want to see [the tournament] get bigger and better."
Calabasas Coach Andy Falk was impressed.
"It was a real good [tournament]," Falk said. "I think it's going to take off. If you [organize] more of these things then the momentum will build."
Yancey's squad had a fair showing.
Amber Gomez placed second at 160 pounds and Courtney Whitner finished second at 171 pounds. Breanna Rooney (114 pounds), Elyse SchoenWard (123) and Tara Cook (145) each finished third.
Yancey also was pleased with Kivi's performance. Yancey, who was an assistant at Reno's Wooster High, coached Kivi three years ago in a youth league.
"She was impressive," Yancey said.
Felix, a member of the Calabasas tennis team, hopes to compete in other girls' tournaments, including the Napa Valley tournament at Vintage High on January 22.
She also has tried golf, kick boxing and bowling, but prefers wrestling, which she first tried last year with prompting from Falk.
"Coach Falk was my teacher and he saw I wasn't doing well in school," Felix said. "He thought that wrestling would help me."
In boys' wrestling:
North Torrance tournament--Simi Valley's Tyson Hadduck placed fourth at 189 pounds and Dan Kunkes finished sixth in the heavyweight division at North Torrance.
Hadduck was the tournament's top seed in his class but dropped into the loser's bracket after a first-round defeat..
Kunkes lost in the semifinals and an ankle injury forced him to forfeit his final two matches.
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BYU officials admit disagreement with gender quota; wrestling doors close regardless
Thursday, January 6, 2000
BYU All-American Aaron Holker stood in the wrestling room on the second level of the Smith Fieldhouse and thought about the countless hours he has spent here with his teammates.
"The greatest lessons I learn in life are right in this room," Holker said.
But after this season the sophomore standout, who was just beginning to bud as the most dominant wrestler in recent BYU history, will have to go elsewhere to sweat, work and learn his lessons.
Holker is part of a growing number of male athletes around the country that have seen an end to their sport on campus. After 36 years of conference play, BYU will close its practice doors for good after this season. Nationwide, over 200 collegiate wrestling programs have been dropped in the last 15 years. The reason for such cuts is to accommodate policies adapted to Title IX equal rights laws.
But fans, legal experts, and even the leaders within BYU's own administration doors are saying the current Title IX interpretation given by the Organization of Civil Rights is hard to swallow, fueling the argument that Holker's end at BYU is not just discouraging, but unconstitutional.
"I agree with the concept of Title IX, but I'm not sure I agree with the interpretations of how it's being administered," BYU Vice-President Fred Skousen said.
Skousen said he believes a university shouldn't have to cut a men's sport to meet gender quotas. And that is what BYU has done under pressure from the OCR. The government agency said ultimately universities, even private ones like BYU, must reach "proportionality"- a term that has caused nationwide controversy.
Defined, proportionality means opportunities and money given to women in collegiate sports should be equal to the percentage of women on campus.
"We're committed to complying with the law. We don't really have a choice," BYU President Merrill J. Bateman said.
Though they don't believe a quota is fair, both President Bateman and Vice-president Skousen said the university is adamant about giving equal opportunities to both men and women in sports. By cutting men's gymnastics and wrestling, BYU added a women's softball program that will begin this season.
But proportionality skeptics argue that a gender quota does the very thing Title IX preaches against: discriminate one gender over the other. The courts have been hearing their plea nationwide, and the strongest case against the policy is gaining momentum in Bakersfield, Calif.
"Proportionality is unfair and illegal," Attorney Mark Martell, of Palo Alto California said. "These current interpretations of Title IX have nothing to do with equal opportunity. It means unequal opportunity."
Martell's client is a former wrestler at California State University Bakersfield. He is suing the school's board of trustees for doing what BYU has done to it's wrestling program.
"We don't have proportionality requirements in engineering, medical school, or other programs and there shouldn't be any in athletics," Martell said.
His argument is simple: men are more interested in playing sports than women, and a gender quota takes opportunities away from males.
Martell won in the district court and in January a ruling will be applied at the state level. If he wins there, then the issue of gender quotas in school sports would likely be placed into the hands of the Supreme Court.
"We have to be mature enough to realize that men and women are different," Martell said.
If proportionality is declared an illegal quota, then colleges would need to look at other options besides cutting men's sports to ensure equal treatment to student athletes. BYU President Bateman said he believes looking at the "interests and skills test" of the student body is a better solution.
"I believe it should be based more on interests than a quota," President Bateman said.
A 1997 university study showed the interests were being met.
A university employee said the study found that of those students that had both the ability and interest to play athletics, 63 percent were males and 37 percent were females. The actual varsity participation rate was almost identical.
"Effectively, we were providing athletic grants of the interest and ability of those students on campus," Director of Institutional Analysis Bruce Higley said. "My only concern is, why aren't they accepting that?"
Instead, the university made the decision in April 1999 to cut the wrestling and gymnastics programs after this year because of what Skousen and President Bateman say was pressure from the OCR.
BYU Assistant General Counsel Michael Orme, who gives legal advice to the BYU administration, said that a precedent was already set in the 10th Circuit where BYU sits, and the university had no choice. However, he said it's possible that a suit in another circuit, like Martell's in California, could find success.
"The Supreme Court has determined in other contexts that quotas - sex or racial - are illegal," Orme said. "I think a very good faithful argument can be made that proportionality is also under that category."
Title IX says that "nothing in the law can be interpreted as to grant preferential or disparate treatment to members of one sex on account of an imbalance which may exist."
The OCR's policy does contain an "interest and skills" prong, which BYU was hoping to meet, that can be used to determine if discrimination exists in athletics. Past court rulings have said it is too vague.
President Bateman also said two other factors played a role in the university's decision: a tighter budget that forced cuts and the fact that the sports of wrestling and gymnastics are dwindling in the Mountain West Conference. However, many wrestling schools are finding ways to fill their schedules with teams outside of their conference.
President Bateman joins the opinion of many legal analysts in the U.S. who say that the football team's amount of scholarships should be eliminated from the proportionality equation to prevent further cuts to men's sports. Football, a larger than life sport, attracts 85 scholarships. That statistic automatically gives administrators the mighty task of providing equal money for women and men in other sports.
In another latest of possible solutions, the Kentucky Law Journal reported that some colleges around the country simply need to cap spending within the athletic departments. It's research showed that some universities are spending lavishly on football and basketball "favors" for coaches, alumni, and players. Less popular sports like wrestling are the first to go when the money is tight. A more correct distribution of funds, the journal reported, would loosen opportunities to accommodate women in sports and not force schools to make cuts. A number of colleges were cited for improper spending of funds.
BYU Assistant Athletic Director of Finance Mike King said the university is not spending its money improperly. Rather, he said BYU is an exception to most universities in how they spend their money.
"Our budget compared to any other major university's shows that expenditures are far below any other," King said. "If there could be some tweaking done, there wouldn't be enough to really loosen up any funds."
One school that has survived the proportionality requirements without cutting men's programs is the University of Kansas. In light of a financial and proportionality dilemma, the school began finding donors to contribute to women's athletics. In four years it raised money for an $8 million dollar sports complex, a women's soccer field, and renovation for women's locker rooms.
It is not known whether BYU looked at potential donors to help build a women's softball program as an option.
Despite talk of solutions, time is running out as universities continue to feel pressure from the OCR to cut men's programs.
Meanwhile, young wrestlers like Holker learn perhaps the hardest lesson of all: politics often wins, even on the mat.
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