And all the traditional rules about teenage girls and teenage boys, how they should behave and how they should touch, are on hold.
Gray finally breaks free. She executes a high crotch hold, and then thrusts her leg between his.
She fights to trap his arm in one of her favorite moves, the chicken wing. Locked in combat, the pair remains almost motionless until she begins to tilt him, very slowly, and pins him to the mat.
Her team roars.
He walks back to his teammates, enduring the kind of defeat rarely seen in a sport thatAdeline Gray not long ago was a boys-only pursuit.
Last year, more than 5,000 girls wrestled in high schools across the nation - up from 112 in 1990, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
The sport is poised to grow even faster with the addition of women's wrestling in the Olympics and more women taking on the sport at college campuses. USA Wrestling is campaigning to get women's wrestling sanctioned as an NCAA sport.
The emerging sport is a flashpoint for controversy, however, especially in more then 40 states where high school girls wrestle on boys teams. Opponents argue against coed wrestling for reasons that range from the threat of girls getting hurt to the
threat of boys being humiliated. And, of course, there is the touching thing.
"Most people don't think women should be wrestling at all, period," says Pat Babi, women's director for Colorado USA Wrestling. "One of the biggest problems is that Colorado doesn't have separate teams for girls who want to wrestle."
Despite the growth in the sport, the numbers in many states are still too low to support separate teams.
Still, some girls are succeeding in a boy's world.
In 2006, Brooke Sauer of Golden High School became the first girl in Colorado history to qualify for the high school state wrestling tournament.
Gray, 16, hopes to do even better in February when Colorado holds its state championships.
"It's a tough goal to accomplish," said her father, George Gray, a Denver police officer. "I think she'll get there, but whether she can accomplish the goal of winning a few is difficult."
She's respected enough at Chatfield High to be a captain of the wrestling team.http://www2.presstelegram.com/moresports/ci_7802257
"She's a good example," says Fred Carrizales, one of the coaches. "She works harder than the boys do, and it's rubbing off on them."
By the time wrestlers reach high school, boys overpower girls in strength, particularly in upper-body strength. Girl grapplers, however, must contend with more than male muscle.
"We're asking people to change their definitions of femininity and masculinity," said Katie Downing, a world-champion pioneer of women's wrestling now training for the Olympics. She just completed her master's degree thesis on the impact of women on the sport.
"Wrestling as it was developed is very much about manhood and individuality and all those things tied in with the American dream," she said. "It has stood for everything that is manly for more than a couple centuries now."
Patricia Miranda, the first American woman to receive an Olympic medal in women's wrestling when she won a 2004 bronze at Athens, remembers a disturbing moment at the start of her career, after her triumph over a boy on her California high school team.
"His mother confronted me when I was rolling up the mats," she said. "She gave me a lot of arguments why it was unfair for girls to compete against boys. She said I put her son in a no-win situation, that if he wins, it's just a girl, and if he loses, his life is over."
Back then, Miranda was much less adept at defending herself.
"I should have said, `Girls can't wrestle by themselves right now, and if girls want to have this experience - which is wonderful for self-esteem and self-confidence - why do you want to close it off to half the population? Why do you, as a parent, teach your son that the worst thing he can do is lose to a girl?' "
Most girls say they'd prefer to wrestle against girls because muscle and strength are more evenly matched.
But only four states - Texas, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon - have all-girl state championships and women's wrestling as a varsity sport.
Which means most states are still trying to figure out what to do with girls who want to wrestle.
Tom Beeson, a member of the National Wrestlers Hall of Fame and a former high school wrestling coach in Colorado, said many boys see it as a "lose-lose situation."
"If they go out and beat her, for lack of a better term, she's a girl, and not as strong, so you should beat her. There's no respect or honor. And if you lose, you have to go out for basketball."
Arnold Torgerson, a member of the National Wrestlers Hall of Fame who coached high school wrestling for 35 years in Colorado, is also opposed to coed wrestling.
He has two sons and four daughters.
"I always taught boys to respect women and take care of them," he said. "Now, to have coaches say to them, `Go out and beat her, run her nose down into the mat,' that's anti-sexist as far as I'm concerned."
Sexuality is another concern.
"High school is a time when guys and girls are beginning to feel their differences," said Torgerson, who believes certain holds, like the high crotch, are problematic for coed wrestling.
"This is the only sport that is skin to skin. So when you're talking about boys skin right up with girls skin in some places where you grab and hold onto unintentionally, these are places where a girl should be offended - or would be, if it happened in the hallway."
Gray, who wrestles with her long dark hair tucked under black unisex headgear, deals with this argument as best she can.
"This is a very physical sport," she said. "I've grown up with wrestling from age 6, so it has never been weird for me to touch guys that way. It is a very different way to touch a guy, but it's not going out there in any sexual way. ... This sport is so mental and so competitive that if you go out there with that mentality, you're going to lose."