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By Tom Shanahan
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
January 11, 2000
When Poway High's Steve Hall saw his second-round opponent at last year's CIF state wrestling meet, a different kind of fear crept into his mind.
His opponent was a girl.
Hall knew he could beat Oakland's Tina Nguyen, but what if he slipped and she scored a takedown? What if something freaky happened and she won the match? His teammates and all those fans would be watching.
His father Jim tried to lighten the load.
"I told him, 'If you lose, I'll still love you, but you're walking home.' " Jim said. "I wanted him to relax. I could see he was stressing. He wasn't afraid of her, but there's always fear of the unknown."
Steve pinned Nguyen in 12 seconds. Nguyen was the first girl to compete in the California state meet, having advanced by default when no other 103-pounders entered the eight-school CIF-Oakland Section meet.
Hall's story is funny, but it's no longer a novelty when boy meets girl in a high school wrestling match. It's happening frequently in JV matches and increasingly at the varsity level.
Wrestling is considered a co-ed sport in the CIF-San Diego Section. Around the county, there are dozens of girls on high school teams. University City has 10 girls in its wrestling room.
San Diego girls competing regularly in varsity matches this year are Madison senior Holly Lingle, Santana junior Alicia Wilson, Hoover junior Berenice Valenzuela, Crawford sophomore Myloan Benh and Montgomery sophomore Tabitha Coffey.
Other girls compete in JV matches or train for all-girls matches that aren't sanctioned by the CIF.
The Grossmont League sponsors a girls tournament, with this year's meet held concurrently with the freshman tournament next Monday at Valhalla. The second girls county championship is Feb. 12 at Mt. Carmel. There is a girls national meet in April in Michigan.
"Girls should be able to wrestle if they want to," Valhalla coach Glen Takahashi said. "It's a good sport for girls to learn. It's a form of simple self-defense. Girls learn an awareness of their body and their strength."
Monte Vista, Valhalla, Helix and Granite Hills had a series of all-girl dual meets before wrestling season began.
"They had a bigger crowd than we get for some of our matches," said Monte Vista's Nick Osnaya, one of the state's top 130-pounders. "They were very competitive matches."
Nationally, the number of girls wrestling in high school has skyrocketed. The National Federation of State High School Associations says it's grown from 112 in 1990 to 2,361 in 1999.
Two states, Texas and Hawaii, sanction girls wrestling as a sport and conduct a state meet. Santana coach Ralph Garcia, noting the number of girls in youth clubs, thinks it's time for San Diego and California to do the same.
"The interest is there in this county and this state," he said. "There are girls waiting in the wings who will do it when it's a girls sport."
Garcia says it wasn't necessary for him to tell his boys they had to accept Wilson and another girl, freshman Rebecca Warke, as part of the team.
"It was never even discussed," Garcia said. "I've never encountered a problem."
Wilson is a varsity wrestler after competing at the JV level last year. The 160-pounder has yet to beat a boy in a varsity match, but she's undaunted.
"Even though I lose, I'm learning against the boys and I'm getting better," Wilson said. "It's an awesome sport. I'm addicted."
She likes the sport for the same reason boys do: It's challenging and rewarding.
"Every year I see more girls (in high school wrestling matches)," Wilson said. "It's exploding. If I had a chance to organize a team at our school, I could find enough girls. A lot of girls tell me they would do what I do if they didn't have to practice and compete against boys."
Benh, Crawford's 112-pounder, was one of five girls who came out for the team when the year began, but she's the only one still with the Colts.
"It's intimidating wrestling boys, but I like the sport," she said. "I want to win and I try my hardest."
Three decades after the advent of Title IX gender-equity laws, girls sports are part of the national landscape. The resistance girls encounter now is when they want to play physical sports.
"I think there are a lot of girls who would like to play a contact sport," Wilson said. "Girls today aren't as scared as they might have been in the past."
Wrestling is a sport of grabbing and holding, which raises other questions when boy meets girl.
"It's not like that," Wilson said. "At first a boy might be worried about where he's touching, but once the match starts it's just two wrestlers out there. It's not a guy and a girl."
Mt. Carmel coach Jose Campo says girls wrestling is the future.
"Who would have thought before Title IX there would be girls hockey or girls rugby?" he said. "This is the next step."
Mt. Carmel seniors Crystal Vitug and Jennifer Kane have been with Campo's program four years.
Vitug pinned three boys last year in JV matches, but as seniors Vitug and Kane are no longer permitted to compete in JV matches. Their focus is the girls county and national championships.
"They've done everything the boys have done since their freshman year," Campo said. "I didn't think they would last, but they did. We're going to reward them by sending them to the girls nationals."
When a girl defeats a boy, the girl's teammates and coaches celebrate the win. It's an inspiring example of a girl overcoming barriers and her male teammates accepting her.
But what about the boy who loses to a girl?
"It's devastating for them," said former Montgomery coach Gabe Ruz, who has found himself on both sides of boy-meets-girl matches.
In 1987, one of Ruz's boys who was new to wrestling was pinned in an early season match by a girl who had a judo background.
"I tried to tell him he wasn't wrestling a girl, that he was wrestling a martial arts expert," Ruz said. "But he was devastated to the point he checked out of school and moved somewhere else."
More recently, 1998 Montgomery graduate Erica Jimenez beat boys as a junior and a senior in both JV and varsity matches. Former Mar Vista coach Gary Pugh said the two boys on his team who lost matches to Jimenez didn't come to school the next day.
But Ruz and other coaches say it would be worse to deny the girl the opportunity to compete.
"It's a big dilemma," Campo said. "Girls should be able to compete like everybody else as long as they're willing to put up with the struggle and disappointment that comes with wrestling. But for the boys, it's a no-win situation."
Crawford's Harry Huynh, a 103-pounder, has lost to Benh in practice matches.
"I'll hear about it from the guys for a couple of days," Huynh says, "but then everybody forgets about it."
The male ego will always be fragile, but ridicule might slowly be giving way to teasing now that many boys are growing up competing against girls in youth wrestling clubs.
At last year's Poway district middle school championships, Caitlin Watson won her weight class. She was a sixth-grader competing against sixth-, seventh-and eighth-graders.
As Campo noted, "She beat the same boys who will some day be wrestling for Poway, Mt. Carmel and Rancho Bernardo."
And maybe Watson will, too.
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Davison rather new No. 1, prefers it at end of season
January 13, 2000
BY TOM LANG
FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER
The Davison wrestling program has gotten progressively stronger the past two years -- something the Cardinals hope they can muscle into a Division I state championship come March.
"I knew last year that Davison or Forest Hills Central would be the teams to beat this season," said Pat Milkovich, coach at Rochester Adams, the state runner-up last season and champion in 1998. "Davison's a group of fired-up kids who are hard workers. They certainly aren't afraid of anyone."
Milkovich made that discovery when Adams defeated Davison in last year's regional.
"Adams was the only team to beat us last year," Davison coach Roy Hall said. "We looked like we were turning the corner, with some individual wins at districts. The Adams coaches started bird-dogging us. When the kids knew the defending state champs were interested and watching us, I think that really boosted our psyche.
"We made a good run. We'll learn what that experience taught us when that time of year comes along again."
Davison, ranked No. 1 in the coaches association poll, is 15-1 in team dual meets. Its loss came to Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central, a 31-31 tie that Central won on criteria. The Cardinals have won team-format tournaments at Birmingham Groves and Genesee County, plus individual-format events at the Goodrich Tournament of Champions and Redford Catholic Central.
Davison's lineup includes seven state placers or qualifiers from 1999. Senior Shaun Newton (112 pounds, 18-4) placed third at 103, sophomore John Whitman (119, 18-4) was seventh at 103, and sophomore Chad Roush (140, 23-2) placed fifth at 130. Sophomore Chase Metcalf (126, 26-0), a transfer from Goodrich, took third at 112 in Division III. This season, Metcalf has been most valuable wrestler at three invitationals.
The other returning state qualifiers are junior Joe Whitman (130, 23-0), an all-state cross-country runner, plus seniors Jon Phillips (171, 17-2) and Nic LaFear (heavyweight, 22-2).
Providing depth are senior Jimmy McFall (145, 16-3), junior Tim Polidan (152, 18-5) and sophomores Casey Streeter (160, 21-4) and Keristen LaBelle (103, 22-4).
Hall acknowledged that having a competitive girl on the squad could throw some teams off base. LaBelle placed second at Goodrich and Catholic Central.
"There's some team bonding she misses out on by not being in the locker room, but overall I don't see a problem," Hall said. "It's developed some of the big brother syndrome that's really helped our team. She knows the sport as well as anyone and is savvy and fundamental."
Milkovich, judging on talent and strength, thought LaBelle was a senior, not a 10th-grader.
Hall said the team feels like a state contender, after tying Forest Hills Central and finishing way ahead of defending state champion Temperance Bedford at the Goodrich tournament. But its perspective is realistic.
"We don't think you can feel like you're truly number one until you prove something," Hall said, alluding to a state title, which Davison won in 1980 and '81. "It's just someone's opinion. We flirted with it last year, and know we can do it with hard work. It's the end of the season that counts, and the kids are extremely focused on that.
"You don't get a banner in the school just for your ranking."
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Girls wrestle with lack of competition
Friends League grapplers have been sidelined by rules limiting matchups.
By John Manasso
INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF
Much has been said and written, both positive and negative, on the subject of girls wrestling against boys.
One matchup that appears to be relatively safe from controversy is girls wrestling girls. It seems that the main problem preventing more all-girls' wrestling teams is a lack of participants.
Participants are not a problem in the Friends League. At least four of the league's six schools have girls on their squads, but few get to compete in matches. Last Tuesday, two girls faced off in a dual meet between Westtown School and Germantown Friends. Westtown's Jay Farrow said it was the first time in his 19 years as coach that he had seen an all-girls' varsity match.
Westtown's entry at 103 pounds, Rebecca Youngdahl, was pinned by Leila MacBeth of Germantown 5 minutes, 24 seconds into the match.
Abington Friends and Friends Central also have female wrestlers. Westtown also competes in the Delaware Independent Schools Conference, and the league's Sanford School also has female wrestlers.
Getting into a match is more difficult for some female wrestlers than others. Youngdahl is Westtown's only 103-pounder. But teammate Sarah Farquhar, the daughter of Westtown's head of school, is fourth on the depth chart at 135, making it unlikely she will get in a match.
Westtown has a policy that female wrestlers cannot compete against or practice against male wrestlers. Thus, it is impossible for Farquhar to move up in her weight class through wrestle-offs.
Other schools in the Friends League do not share the same policy. For example, Germantown Friends allows its girls to compete against boys.
Westtown's policy also forces its male wrestlers to forfeit matches in which they are paired against girls.
"The Friends schools are wrestling with the issue," Farrow said. "We want to be accommodating, but there are limits."
One of the problems facing the Friends League is the competitive imbalance of one school having to forfeit a match because of a possible male-female matchup. The rule could be used simply to gain points and win a dual meet.
"It could wind up costing us meets, and eventually, it could cost us a league title," Farrow said. "I don't think we're all on the same page, but eventually, we'll work it out." Farrow said girls have been on Westtown's team for three or four years and that many of them became interested in the sport through Westtown's middle school program.
However, Farrow said the school's faculty recently voted to make wrestling a boys-only sport at the middle school level.
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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.
Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.
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Sarah Van Skaik of St. Bernard is the first girl in Ohio to qualify for a district tournament |
Girl wrestler pins spot in district tournament
Wednesday, February 24, 1999
BY MARK SCHMETZER
Enquirer contributor
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.'”
