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They´re holding their own, but only through hard work
Allen Stein, Deering High School
2/1/05 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
If you had to choose a high school sport in which boys and girls could compete together, chances are wrestling wouldn´t be high on your list.
Then why is it that wrestling is one of the only sports offered as a coed activity at the high school level?
Physically, male athletes are often naturally stronger and faster than female athletes. It doesn´t seem fair that girls should have to compete against boys, and it isn´t really fair that boys should have to compete against girls.
But we do.
Whether you´re a boy or a girl, if you´re wrestling, you must love the sport. But there is a decided disadvantage for female wrestlers, and because of this male wrestlers face pressure they didn´t expect when they got into the sport.
Most female wrestlers, excluding Deanna Rix, don´t win very many matches. Rix, the sensational 130-pounder from Marshwood, just recorded her 100th career victory.
In a sport in which physical strength is such an important factor, most girls are at a huge disadvantage. There obviously are some very strong girls, but boys who decide to wrestle generally are pretty strong, too.
Strength, of course, isn´t the only factor. Flexibility is also important and as is obvious from watching gymnastics and cheerleading, girls on average are more flexible than boys.
In addition, one of the great things about wrestling is that if the girls are willing to put in the time and effort to get their technique to a high level, they can compete against male wrestlers.
This is exactly what Rix has done. She has worked hard on her technique, built strength and has become one of the top-ranked 130-pounders in the state.
Actually, some people believe girls are at an advantage going into a match. There´s no pressure on them: If they lose, it´s no big deal. Unless you´re Deanna Rix, girls are not expected to win against boys.
But for a male wrestler, there is all the pressure in the world. If he loses to a girl, he has to face his friends and teammates after the match, and he is often subjected to mean jokes and negative comments.
As a male wrestler in a small weight class, I have faced my share of female opponents. I find the situation awkward and frustrating.
It feels like a lose-lose situation to me. If you lose to the girl, well, you lost to a girl. If you beat the girl, so what? You just beat up on a girl.
You feel like you just can´t win.
I know that as wrestlers, guys shouldn´t feel this way. And in writing this column, I am by no means trying to say girls aren´t equal to guys on the wrestling mat.
But you have to put yourself in the shoes of a high school-aged male wrestler, in a sport as close to a physical "fight" as any other sport in high school athletics. It can be a tough situation.
But, with that said, wrestling is all about toughness. And this is where things can get touchy.
A couple of years ago, I saw a male wrestler matched up against a much more talented female opponent. She was clearly the better wrestler, but the boy did something I had never seen.
He threw all of his wrestling moves aside and just tried to beat her up. He used his physical strength and without using any illegal moves, he just hurt her.
By the end of the match, she was in tears. Her coach decided to forfeit.
After the match, a lot of people were angry at the way this boy had wrestled, but he hadn´t done anything illegal. He knew that if he tried to wrestle on technique alone, he would have lost the match.
Many other boys would have done the same thing. If a girl wants to walk out on the mat, then she´d better be able to take this type of physical punishment.
There has been a lot of talk about forming an all-girls wrestling league, although there currently aren´t nearly enough female wrestlers to start such a league.
I think one of the reasons there aren´t a lot of girls wrestling is that most girls don´t want to wrestle against boys. Maybe if the athletic directors and the Maine Principals´ Association formed an all-girls league, more girls would take up the sport.
Rix has said she likes the competition of wrestling against boys. After all, she already has won two girls national titles - without conceding a point to another wrestler.
Boy or girl, you can never underestimate your opponent, and now more than ever, girls are proving they deserve to be on the mat with boys.
Last week at a 29-team tournament in Essex Junction, Vt., Nicole Barrow from Mount Greylock High in Massachusetts advanced to the 112-pound final against the nation´s fifth-ranked male wrestler at that weight class.
Even though she lost 14-0, she was the only opponent in the tournament, male or female, he didn´t pin.
Though it may be tough for male wrestlers to find a positive in having to compete with females, the positive contributions of female wrestlers such as Deanna Rix and Nicole Barrow prove that if they work hard, girls can hold their own.
Allen Stein is a junior at Deering High and a member of the wrestling team.
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By J.P. HOORNSTRA: Times-Herald sports writer 2/1/05
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Vallejo High senior Jaime Sage said she didn't feel as much pressure at the Girls California Wrestling Invitational Tournament in 2005 as she did in 2004.
As if anyone in attendance couldn't tell.
"It didn't really feel much like - you know - the girls state," she said. "Then the last round, it felt more like state."
The Times-Herald Athlete of the Week cruised through four matches at the unofficial state wrestling championships on Friday and Saturday to win the 122-pound weight class. A fifth-place finisher as a junior, Sage claimed one of two individual titles for the Apaches along with Elizabeth Bustamante.
Head coach Mike Minahen called Sage's performance "very impressive."
"She really didn't have a close match all weekend," he said. "The closest was the final and she won by eight points."
The title-winning match, a 10-2 win, came against Tracy's Shareese Mulholand, who Sage had beaten at the Northeast Regional seven days earlier. Shortly after her title match on Saturday, Sage recalled a conversation she had with Mulholand after Regionals:
"I was joking, I don't want to wrestle you at state. Unless we make it to finals.' I didn't expect it to happen. Then it did."
Once in the ring, it didn't take Sage long to get down to business.
With a thud, she recorded a takedown on Mulholand from a standing position just 39 seconds into the match. For the remainder of the first period, Sage, from the top position, skillfully fended off Mulholand's escape maneuvers.
To start the second period, Sage started from the down position and recorded an escape within the first 10 seconds - something she had never done before in four matches against Mulholand, she said.
"The first time I escaped," Sage said, "it gave me more confidence."
Two takedowns later, Sage had an 8-0 lead by the end of the second period.
The third period added an element of drama, as Sage began in the down position and stayed underneath Mulholand, being spun on her chest as the two grappled for position.
Then, with 0:53 remaining in the match, Vallejo was awarded an injury timeout as a grimacing Sage held out her left hand. The middle and ring knuckles on the hand were swollen, an injury that would keep her out of Monday's team practice; she is still awaiting a final diagnosis.
Although Sage looked weaker for the rest of the match, even allowing a takedown, it was not enough to prevent the inevitable.
"Her technique is very solid ... and she's only lost a couple of takedowns this year," he said.
Sage has only lost three times against girls this season, and plans to enter the United States Girls Wrestling Association Championships on Feb. 13 in Port Huron, Mich. She finished a respectable 12th at the event last season but is aiming for All-American honors, which go to the top eight in each weight class.
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Lions find wrestlers tough to pin down
But having few female wrestlers can't keep Oviedo from winning
Isaac Babcock | January 13, 2005
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As she held her opponent to the ground Wednesday night, you could see Keisha Dawson getting angrier. It was beaming from her eyes and stretching across her concentrated grimace.
It wasn't going to happen. She was going to win, but it wasn't the win she wanted. It was the pin she desired. It was the points. Her hand held high in the air by the referee wouldn't be enough.
With the scoreboard incorrectly reading 7-6, she left the mat thinking she'd won but feeling beaten. In a night filled with scoring mishaps, she was worried about not doing her best. She didn't talk to anyone for 10 minutes after the match.
She's just taken on a formidable wrestler from the most heavily stacked county in Central Florida: Osceola County's St. Cloud High School. Never mind the fact that Keisha was wrestling three weight classes above her own just to get the chance to take this girl on.
She was mad at herself for not trying hard enough.
"I went out there and messed around the first half," she said. "I planned on getting 14 points and a pin, but that didn't happen."
She's fighting hard to keep things interesting on the mat, while around her the Oviedo Lions are fighting off the destruction of their sport. Right now, they could use all the help they can get.
Keisha is part of a fledgling Oviedo girls wrestling program that, like many programs in Seminole County, still looks for traction in a male-dominated sports world, even as the Lions enter their seventh season.
Though the team is having a banner year in terms of team depth, with 12 girls hitting the mat for the season, the team still wonders if the program will continue.
Across the county at Lake Brantley High School, the Patriots are fielding four wrestlers this year.
The Lions won't be taking on their rival, Winter Springs, this season; the Bears aren't even fielding a team. No wrestlers.
Even with the most robust squad in the county, Oviedo isn't what they once were. In the team's first season in 1998 to 1999, it fielded 23 wrestlers - still the record for the team.
Erin Schroeder served as co-captain the first year. Pushed to try out by a friend in the boys wrestling program, she walked into the wrestling room and was immediately on the team. She filled the 145-pound weight class. That's what the team needed.
It was a new experience for almost everybody.
"I didn't know anything about wrestling before that," she said. "But we worked hard. We worked our butts off."
The team would tie for conference champions its first year. Within two years it would send six girls to the national championships with Team Florida. They placed fifth.
As the years rolled on though, the girls found themselves on a roller-coaster ride of rising and falling attendance, which wreaked havoc on their schedules and threatened to jeopardize their whole sport.
With teams intermittently expanding and shrinking as interest swelled and waned, coaches found themselves desperately seeking athletes to fill empty positions.
"It got to the point where one day I stood in the hallway handing out pamphlets to girls who looked like they were in the weight classes we needed," Coach Marge Carver said.
Without a full roster, she said, teams either forfeit or are forced to wrestle a mismatched tournament. Girls can find themselves taking on opponents 20 pounds heavier than themselves because that's all the other team has.
Wednesday night at Oviedo's dual meet against St. Cloud, that's exactly what happened. With a half dozen seasons under their belts, keeping full rosters is still the toughest thing for these teams to pin down.
Only one match the whole night would be even. Jessie Frank took on St. Cloud's April Darter at 151 pounds and fought an exhausting match that ended 2-10, Oviedo on top.
Keisha was forced to take on a girl 11 pounds heavier than the weight class she usually wrestles in, which is the class above her actual weight. It's the only way she can get a challenge, and often the only way she can get to wrestle at all.
The match began about an hour late following a confused realignment of the wrestlers - St. Cloud hadn't brought enough wrestlers. Rather than accept forfeits in the empty weight classes, Oviedo chose to mix things up and let the show go on.
"We're all wrestling up a class," said Christine Alexander, who graduated in 2003 but returned to Oviedo to help train the team. "We've got a 136 wrestling a 151."
Coming off months of preparation and weeks of early season matches, the girls had a strong platform to stand on - the boys' team.
As Oviedo JETS wrestling club Coach J.D. Robbins looked on as the first match hit the mat, you could see he wasn't worried. He's helped personally train everybody on the girls team.
It's about equality, he said.
"People think that by developing a good wrestling program, that's gonna bring people back to Florida and back into the sport," he said. "It's not that; it's bringing equality to the program. If the coaches at the high-school level develop girls' wrestling, then it'll help the whole sport."
Robbins had been training his middle-school-level JETS boys team with the girls team to help them progress, and it's been working.
The meet opened with a bang, as second year veteran Allie Daniel took on St. Cloud's Tina Scott, dominating the match before pinning her Bulldog opponent to end the match quickly.
As team captain Shiala Morales stepped onto the mat against St. Cloud's Amanda King, she knew she had a problem. She was the 136-pounder going up against St. Cloud's 151. Amanda also towered over Shiala. Coach Carver calls Shiala the hardest-working girl on the team.
A sophomore in her second year with the squad, she carried some rare experience onto the mat before joining the team.
"Me and my friends used to wrestle in our backyard," she said. "It was a lot of fun. I was pretty good at it, so I stuck with it."
In a match that seemed to take on David versus Goliath proportions, Shiala held her own, keeping even points, attempting several pins but completing none. It would end nearly a draw, with Amanda's hand in the air.
Deja vu took hold of the gymnasium as Brittany Daniel walked onto the mat to face Amanda King's twin sister Jessica, a bigger, stronger version of the former, once again significantly outweighing her Oviedo opponent.
What began with girls on their feet for the first minute of the match quickly turned into what resembled a choking match, as Jessica tried to roll Brittany onto her back for a pin, using Brittany's own arm to wrap around her neck. She would break free and remain untouchable for nearly the remainder of the match before Jessica finally got her to the mat again to complete the pin.
In Amanda King's second attempt against an Oviedo Lion she found herself paired against Jen D'Angelo. Having just seen her sister Vanessa - who the team calls its beauty queen - lose to a pin, Jen was out for revenge. Amanda once again put up a long fight, pushing a tough match deep into regulation. But Jen got revenge, taking Amanda down in the final minutes of the match.
The girls of Oviedo would finish the match in an unexpected position: Victorious over the once intimidating Osceola County school, 25-21.
Robbins could have predicted that. Having seen the girls program mature with the help of the boys' team, he's seeing skills expand and hard work pay off.
"They're a level higher than I've seen them since starting at Oviedo four years ago," he said. "They've got a group that wants to work hard - and they do work hard."
With the work ethic and talent taken care of, Alexander said, the team just needs to find a way to keep girls to stick with the sport.
"Mrs. Carver gave me an award for sticking around for four years," she said. "The boys stick around - the girls don't right now."
Robbins says the key is keeping the girls interested by pushing them to try for higher goals and to achieve more, which will bring more girls into the program.
"Our goal has always been to get to the next level," he said. "Now the goal is for the girls to get to the next level. That's going to help the whole wrestling community. It's the sport giving back to both genders."
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Wrestling: Dehnz becomes Palmetto Ridge's first state champ
By Daily News staff
January 30, 2005
Ashley Dehnz became Palmetto Ridge's first-ever state champion
Saturday, but it was nothing new to her.
Dehnz, a senior wrestler for the Bears, won the Florida State Girls
Wrestling Championship in Kissimmee. In doing so, she finished her
reign of dominance that is nothing if not amazing. Consider:
• She has won three straight state titles, one for Barron Collier, one
for Gulf Coast and one for Palmetto Ridge
• In those three years, she is 59-0 against girls
• She has had five points scored against her by girls, ever
Dehnz pinned pinned undefeated Janette Valentine from Pointsiana High
School 52 seconds in the 119-pound final match. She won every match of the
tournament either by a pin or a technical fall.
"I wasn't too worried about it; I had to stay confident," she said.
"The whole year, this is what I look forward to. This is what I work so hard
to get to.
"It's my senior year. A lot of people were looking to me."
There were 48 different schools at the tournament, 140-plus girls
overall and 16 girls in Dehnz's weight class. At one point — with PRHS
represented by only Dehnz — the Bears were 11th in team points.
Mark Rosenbalm, who coached Dehnz as an assistant at Gulf Coast before
taking over the Bears in their inaugural season, said she is one of the
hardest workers he's ever seen.
"At first I wasn't a huge believer in women's wrestling, but Ashley
made me a believer," Rosenbalm said. "She works as hard or harder than any boys
on the team. She takes the sport seriously and inspires those around her."
Next up for Dehnz is a recruiting trip. She will visit Cumberland (Ky.)
College — one of seven college women's wrestling teams — next month,
and has a good chance of getting a full scholarship there.
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Christy Cabrera Chirinos
Published February 1, 2005
Leila Maloff of Douglas pinned Valerie Oquendo of Titusville in 1:59 to win the state girls' wrestling championship in the 145-pound weight class on Saturday. Maloff plans to sign with Pacific University on Wednesday.
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Junior HIgh wrestlers excited about the season
By Ken Stejbach 2/1/05
kstejbach@seacoastonline.com
Hampton Academy junior High's Tyka Edwards (back) reaches for the foot of her opponent during Thursday's meet against Timberlane.
Ken Stejbach photo
HAMPTON - Excitement.
Like the kind Michael and Matt Sullivan feel about their Hampton Academy Junior High wrestling team.
Like the kind Leda Whitney and Tyka Edwards and their HAJH teammates generate on the mat.
Like the kind HAJH coaches Justin Wear, Mark Chooljian and Tom Linane exemplify.
Like the effect the Winnacunnet wrestling team and its coaching staff has on the HAJH program.
Thirty-three wrestlers from HAJH wrestled at Thursday’s dual meet against Timberlane Junior High School at the Marston School.
In the end, there were too many wrestlers and too many different circumstances to determine a final score, but "we wrestled extremely well," Chooljian said.
Winning or losing wasn’t the most exciting aspect of the meet.
Exciting was watching the wrestlers.
"It’s fun, it’s great," Matt Sullivan said. "It’s my favorite sport. I love it. I love to watch it. I love to wrestle. It’s something to have fun in. I like everything about it. Tournaments, meets and learning new moves."
"It’s cool," says Mike, his 11-year-old twin brother, the older by 12 minutes.
Mike recently won the 105-pound championship at a junior high tournament in Concord. Matt was fifth in his 100-pound division.
The two have been part of the program since its inception as a club level sport. Jamie Sullivan, their father, and Linane, the resource officer at HAJH, got the program on its feet three years ago, but it didn’t become a school sport until this season when it became sanctioned by the school board.
Mike and Matt, both sixth graders, are quad captains of the team with Tyka Edwards, a seventh grader, and James Chooljian, an eighth grader.
As excited as the boys were, so were the numerous girls on the team.
Edwards, 12, wrestled last year.
"I wanted to do it again," she said, noting there were no meets last year and having them this year is what makes it more fun.
Edwards likes the contact.
"I enjoy being aggressive," Edwards said. "It’s also fun when you beat the guys."
Edwards scored an overtime win over her opponent last Thursday.
Edwards said she’s used to being in the spotlight when she’s out there.
"I like the idea of everyone watching," she says referring to the sizeable crowd.
Hannah Beringer, a 13-year-old seventh grader, says the "best part is picking them up and throwing them around the ground. And winning."
The guys?
"If you wrestle guys and lose it doesn’t matter," Beringer said.
"If you beat the boys, it’s awesome," seventh grader Alex Arslanian said.
Boy or girl. It doesn’t matter to Leda Whitney, a 12-year-old seventh grader.
Whitney had just come off the mat after an overtime victory over his opponent.
"He was strong," Whitney said. "Stronger than the ones I usually wrestle."
Whitney, who formerly played basketball, has wrestled for about two or three months. She says wrestling to her is "being able to win knowing you’re stronger than your opponent."
As exciting as it is out on the mat, it’s not the easiest of sports.
"You get real tired out there," Arslanian said. "It’s like drowning. It’s fun when you’re strong, but when you know you’re going to lose it’s horrible."
Arslanian, however, was smiling when she said horrible.
Arslanian says seeing Benincasa and his wrestling team at their meets "makes me want to work real hard and impress them. It’s very good motivation."
Wrestling also is all about having fun learning.
The HAJH wrestlers practice two hours every day after school. One hour is spent on conditioning, the other on learning new moves and scrimmaging.
"Last year I didn’t like wrestling," Beringer said. "This year it’s my favorite thing to do."
"I look forward to going to practice every day," Arslanian said.
Others who competed Thursday were: Abbie Beringer, James Chooljian, Robbie Chooljian, Dusty Claar, Tyler Collins, Joey Drahms, Matt Fortuna, Barett Gareau, Kira Gott, Shawn Griffin, Matt Hayes, Sean Kelley, Brian Kimball, Cody Jackson, Roland Maddor, Michael Mayer, Samantha Mercerio, Cassidy Parnell, Victor Peters, Renata Santos, Michael Shanley, Aaron Smith, and Patrick Toomey.
