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Backyard Wrestling Not Just For Boys!
Backyard Wrestling Has One Coach Up In Arms

DETROIT, February 15, 2001-- Kevin Dietz

We've seen teenagers roof diving, body slamming, even smashing through fire all in hopes of becoming national wrestling stars on a mass-marketed video called: "The Best Of Backyard Wrestling."

We showed you bloodshed as this group of Waterford teens broke fluorescent bulbs over each other and threw opponents onto a bed of carpet tacks.
We discovered a group of Grosse Pointe teens boasting on their Internet site that they've made the backyard big time.

Now Local 4 defenders have discovered another shocking fact: teenage girls want in on the action, too.

The girls smash boards over the head of a male wrestler. One female wrestler delivers roundhouse punches to her opponent, but the photographer seems to have something else on his mind.

It's battle of the sexes and watch as this girl jumps off the trampoline onto her male counterpart, breaking a table in the process.

Guys hoot and hollar as this female wrestler takes it off and then gets it on in the ring.

The teenage girls kick, punch, tumble and just like the guys, pile drive and body slam.

One unsuspecting female wrestler gets hit in the back by a guy with a folding chair.

"This is nuts," Kent Bailo of the United States Girls Wrestling Association said. "Break your neck, spend your life in a wheelchair as a quad or paraplegic is not very much fun."

Bailo has spent the last 30 years refereeing high school and college wrestling matches. Three years ago, he started the United States Girls Wrestling Association here in metro Detroit.

It began with just a handful of members. Today it's grown to more than 500 female wrestlers in 14 different states.

As an expert in girl's wrestling, Bailo said that there's a huge difference between the sanctioned sport and what he calls women's backyard chaos.

"Anything that may harm or injure someone is an illegal hold," Bailo said.

When Local 4 Defenders showed him the videotape, Bailo was disturbed and disgusted by what he saw on the screen.

"It's not funny anymore when you're best friend is a quadraplegic in a wheelchair because you hit him in the head with a board," Bailo said.

Brandy Rosenbhrock is 16 years old and the only female wrestler at East Detroit High School in Eastpointe. Brandy said that the girls' moves on the tape would never fly in official high school matches.

"We're not throwing each other on tables and in dangerous positions to hurt one another," Brandy said.

This year, Brandy boasts a winning record on the mat, but the wrestling stand out tells the defenders she opts for the pride and self-esteem her high school wrestling provides. She says she'd never set foot in a backyard wrestling ring.

"I wouldn't want nobody jumping on me like that trying to hurt me. It's uncalled for," Brandy said.

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Wrestling with Change: Girls Down on the Mat, but Not Out

Katy Abel

High School Girls Grapple with Male-Dominated Contact Sports

A local newspaper dubbed her "The Gritty Grappler," and with good reason. At 112 pounds, Katrina Betts, a senior at Milan High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has defeated 18 of her 24 opponents this season, with 11 pins. Her victories are remarkable for several reasons: She’s not only come back to the mat after life-threatening injuries suffered in a car accident two years ago, she’s also managed to hold her own in a sport where the presence of females is often only grudgingly accepted.

I’d say the parents are the worst," Betts commented after one tournament. "Actually I think the mothers are a lot worse than the fathers. I don’t think they like it when a girl beats one of their sons."

According to the National Federation of High School Associations, 2,300 girls now compete in wrestling, up from a scant 94 in 1992. With the growth in girls’ interest in the sport, many schools find themselves literally wrestling with the question of how to accommodate both sexes in a traditionally male sport. Title IX requires any school receiving federal funds to allow girls to try out for, and if qualified, participate on a boys’ team if no comparable girls’ team is available. Although contact sports -- such as football, ice hockey, and wrestling -- are specifically exempt from the Title IX mandate, most coaches seem inclined to accommodate girls, even if they aren’t required to do so by law.

A Level Playing Field?

"At first, it’s like, 'Ooo, there’s a girl on the team,' but after a week it’s no big deal," says Lance Lomano, wrestling coach at Northeast High School in St. Petersburg, Florida, where senior Alix Lauer is the sole female member of the school team. "She’s kind of a tomboy, so most of us treat her equally. The guys don’t take it easy on her."

Lauer must wait outside the weigh-in room while other teammates take their turns on the scale. She removes more jewelry before a match than other players. Other than that, her presence on the team has become almost unremarkable, Lomano says. Unlike football, basketball, or hockey, where adolescent boys’ height or physical strength often makes it impossible for girls to compete on a "level playing field," wrestlers are matched according to weight.

"You’re competing against someone in the same ball park, because weight is a leveler," notes Jim Thompson, director of the Positive Coaching Alliance based at Stanford University. "For girls who want to play at the highest level in any sport, playing against boys toughens them up."

A League of Their Own?

Others argue that denying girls a chance to compete in the sport of their choice constitutes social, if not legal, discrimination. The short-term answer, Thompson believes, is sensitivity training for coaches, so they know how to deal with both boys’ fear of ridicule and girls’ feelings about being ostracized. In the long term, all observers agree, the best scenario is for girls to wrestle other girls on teams of their own. In fact, women’s wrestling may become an Olympic sport for the 2004 games in Athens, Greece, a sign of how much acceptance the sport has gained worldwide.

In the meantime, a growing number of young women seem determined to take their place on the mat, despite the obstacles.

"The guys are so much stronger," wrestler Alix Lauer told the St. Petersburg Times, "but I try not to think about that. It’s like running. I say to myself, ‘What’s stopping me from putting one leg in front of the other? Nothing."

For more information on the emerging sport of girls’ wrestling, please visit Female High School Wrestlers.

"I Got Beat by a Girl"

But what makes for an exciting and challenging opportunity for girls may provide a different sort of challenge for boys, observers note.

"They say, ‘Oh, if I ever lost to a girl I’d be so embarrassed,’" coach Lomano says of the boys on his wrestling team. "And the girls know, if a guy loses to them he’s going to take a lot of ridicule."

"Thinking about the adolescent boy’s psyche, they have so much anxiety and insecurity," says Thompson. "’I got beat by a girl’ can be turned inward in a negative way, with negative self-talk, or outward in misogynistic, anti-female vocabulary and behavior."

Lomano has observed no inappropriate behavior on the mat when girls and boys wrestle each other, precisely because, he believes, boys are reluctant to compete with girls in the first place. Despite that, some schools would rather "pay than play."

"We will forfeit a match if a girl is on the opposing team," vows John Herzog, superintendent of Detroit’s Lutheran High School Association representing five private high schools. "The opening hold is obscene. They’ve got the hands on the crotch. You have to draw the line somewhere, and we would say there are ample opportunities for girls in other sports."

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Raising Your Athletic Daughter

Kyanna Sutton

Can playing sports build self-esteem and actually save girls' lives? We asked Jean Zimmerman and Gil Reavill, authors of Raising Our Athletic Daughters, to give us the scoop on how and why playing sports benefits girls.

Q: What can participating in sports do for girls?

Gil & Jean: Girls who participate in sports are less likely to drop out of school, more likely to go on to college, and more likely to graduate from college.

They tend to avoid a whole host of risk-taking and self-destructive behaviors. Girl athletes have one of the lowest rates of tobacco use among any sector of the high-school population; they are less likely to abuse drugs; they are less likely to get pregnant, more likely to delay their first sexual experience, and have, on average, fewer sexual partners than girls who do not participate in sports.

In addition, girls derive benefits from athletics that are difficult to measure objectively, such as confidence and self-esteem; they score higher on tests designed to gauge positive body image. We spoke with girls all over the country in the course of doing research for this book. The athletes we met were, on the whole, "achievers" who cited sports as an important strengthening factor in their lives. One characteristic we noticed over and over was a sense of focus and of being centered -- these were, by and large, young women who knew where they were going with their lives.

Q: At what age should parents introduce their daughters to sports?

Gil & Jean: Rather than seeing a certain age as a proper threshold for starting girls in sports, we encourage parents to see sports, movement, and physical activity as an inherent part of their daughters’ lives from day one. Go into a nursery of a local hospital, and you’ll see baseball gloves in boys’ bassinets and stuffed toys in girls’. Social conditioning -- seeing athletics as natural for boys -- starts that early.

By the time boys are three years old, their dads are taking them out to the backyard and teaching them how to throw. We tend not to take the same time and trouble to instruct girls. We encourage them in other pursuits, from playing fairy princess to dressing up their dolls.

By kindergarten, boys tend to be further along the athletic skill-level spectrum than their girl peers. With skill comes confidence, and if you don’t have confidence, playing organized sports can be a lot less fun. We tend not to give girls the basic tools they need to have a successful sports experience, thus they may not enjoy sports and drop out, and the old attitude that "sports are not for girls" gets reinforced.

The most important thing that parents can do is give their daughters basic athletic skills and the "permission" to express themselves physically. Specifically, teach a girl how to throw overhand. The overhand throw is the basis for so many sports activities -- baseball, of course, but also the tennis serve, the volleyball serve and spike, the forward pass in football, even the javelin throw. It should be "equipment" for all little girls growing up.

Parental Involvement

Q: To what extent should parents be involved in the athletic lives of their daughters?

Gil & Jean: It means so much to girls when parents are involved that we feel parents should make as much an effort as possible on many different levels. First of all, get active as a family. Setting a good example and being involved in sports yourself is very important -- statistics show that girls who have parents involved in sports are more likely to get involved in sports themselves. If that’s not possible, be a fan of women’s sports wherever you might find them: watch the final four basketball championships on television, the women’s events in the Olympics, or the high-school games in your community.

Another approach is to buy sports equipment for your daughter -- either as gifts, or as a matter of course -- the way you would buy her books or items for her wardrobe. Attending your daughter’s games is an invaluable way to show you support her athletic involvement. Girls told us that they always noticed their mothers' and fathers’ voices cheering them on in the crowd at their games.

Q: In which sports do girls still have a lot of trail-blazing to do?

Gil & Jean: One surprise we got in speaking with girls was that when we asked about their favorite sports, so many of them responded "football." And yet football is not generally thought of as a sport girls like to play, nor is it a sport where girls are given a lot of opportunity to play. The other so-called "combat" sports -- boxing, hockey, wrestling, rugby -- also exhibit this combination of a surprising degree of interest among girls matched with limited opportunities. Generally, the "X" sports, or extreme sports, including the board sports (skateboarding, snowboarding) have been more welcoming to girls and are seeing wide participation among female athletes. Contrary to popular assumptions, girls don’t mind playing rough.

Why Girls Drop Out

Q: What's going on at the cusp of adolescence that makes girls more likely than their male counterparts to drop out of sports?

Gil & Jean: A host of factors may come into play at this crucial time. Messages conveyed by the media that our daughters begin receiving at a very early age -- "sports are for boys," and "girls should be dainty" -- might finally take hold during this period of high insecurity and sensitivity to gender roles.

Girls are sorting out who they are, what it means to be a woman, and what activities are acceptable and proper in order to be seen as feminine. Concurrently, there is an explosion of possibility, in the sense that what they are allowed to do suddenly widens considerably in scope. Middle-school and high-school girls tend to get very busy, with homework, jobs, and dating. Sports -- especially if they are seen as somehow socially suspect -- can get lost in the shuffle. There might also be a narrowing of athletic opportunity at this time. If the programs and support are not there, if the groundwork has not been laid earlier in life, girls might put other things first.

Q: Some people say that watching girls play sports isn't nearly as fun or entertaining as watching boys play. What do you think?

Gil & Jean: In the 1970s, Billie Jean King and others inaugurated a women’s tennis circuit that became one of the most successful spectator sports of all time. The organizers challenged arguments that men’s tennis was objectively "better" than women’s tennis -- that men could send a serve over the net that was X miles an hour faster than the average women’s serve, for example, or that there was overall more power and speed in the men’s game.

The women’s circuit organizers focused on a simple subjective question: Did people enjoy watching women’s tennis? That question came back in a rousing affirmative, and today women’s tennis actually outdraws men’s tennis on European television and has come very close to parity with men’s tennis in this country.

A visit to a WNBA game underscores the idea that watching women play sports is something many people find enjoyable. Women’s professional sports might avoid some of the excesses that men’s sports fall heir to: violence, over-aggressiveness, over-emphasis on individual achievement at the expense of the team, etc. As girls’ skills improve and as their confidence rises, the excitement level about girls' high-school games is bound to increase.

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Wearing makeup is OK for T.O. wrestlers
CLUB SPORT: In its third year, Yancey developing a strong program with 20 girls.

By Rhiannon Potkey
Correspondent
Sunday February 4, 2001

Another sweat-filled practice has ended for the Thousand Oaks wrestling squad. The wrestlers make their way into the locker room to shower and prepare for a team-bonding night.

Each one finds a place in front of the mirror to check the hair and clothes. Coach yells to hurry up.

"Just another minute for our makeup," is the collective response.

Who said that wrestling is for the boys? Thousand Oaks High is fielding a girls' wrestling team for the third consecutive year. The philosophy is simple:you can be tough and still be feminine. No girl is required to wrestle against boys, but have the option.

Head coach Shannon Yancey, an English and physical education teacher at Thousand Oaks, started the program.

Yancey wrestled for the Chaffey High School boys' team her junior and senior seasons. She went on to make the women's national team from 1991-98, becoming a 4-time national champion.

She credits wrestling for giving her direction in life.

"Iwouldn't have gone to college unless Ihad found wrestling. It really motivated me," said Yancey.

Now she wants to see other girls achieve the same.

Freshmen wrestler Stacie Takeshita, has already benefited,"It gives you a lot of self-confidence. I have learned that it is fun to do something different," Takeshita said.

Junior Mollie Craven agrees, "I kind of just fell into it (wrestling), but I love it. It has changed my life. It has given me something to focus on," she said.

The biggest challenge facing the team is getting other schools to form all-girl teams.

"Myhope is that everyone will start catching on. We want the girls to be able to wrestle on a weekly basis and eventually become a CIF sport,"saidYancey.

More girl wrestlers would be required for that to occur. Yancey feels that once girls know they don't have to wrestle against guys, more would be willing to try out. Parental approval, which is often a reason girls don't wrestle, would also increase. At Thousand Oaks they have gone from six girls the first year to more than 20 the past two years.

Becoming a CIFsport would mean receiving needed funding for travel and tournament fees. Thousand Oaks has participated in three tournaments this season: The Williams Cup, The Napa Valley Girls' Classic and the Hawaii Tournament.

The trip to Hawaii, where girls' wrestling is a varsity sport, enabled the team to miss three days of school.

"Hawaii was the best vacation ever," said Craven. "We got to experience a dual-meet type environment for the first time."

The team gets some of its funding through fundraisers and the other expenses are left to the girls.

"We sold beenie babies for one fundraiser with little purple T-shirts that said 'Girls' Wrestling Rocks,'" said Craven, who is in her third year on the team.

The idea of girls and wrestling coming together is still under the scrutiny of stereotypes and false assumptions, according to Craven.

"Some girls wear the baggy pants and cut their hair short, but we are not like that. We wear green bows in our hair and act like girly girls," said Craven.

"They don't have to act like boys to fit in because we have a full team of females. A lot of the fears would go away if that occurred at other schools," said Yancey

Yancey knows that coed wrestling puts both sexes in awkward positions, no pun intended. If the girl wins, the guy looks like a wimp, and if the guy wins, it is back to the 'I told you girls shouldn't wrestle' theory.

At Thousand Oaks, the team has been accepted since its inception. "People think it is cool. The guys are nice and the coaches accept us. No one has ever spoken badly about it," said Craven.

"Once you establish you are serious they don't bother you. When Ifirst started coaching, Ihad to prove myself to the boys' team," added Yancey.

Yancey realizes getting other schools involved isn't easy. She takes it upon herself to call the teams the boys face and encourage them to bring any girl members. She makes separate weight classes and gives them mat time in between the JV and varsity boys' matches. Word is spreading slowly. "In San Diego, they are getting more and more girls. It is just going to take exposure. There are so many females out there who like to compete," said Yancey.

-- Rhiannon Potkey can be reached by e-mail at Rhi21@aol.com.

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A New Game in Town

2/18/2001

In a wrestling crazed state like Iowa, it just had to happen: girls' high school wrestling. Gilbert High School, now in its third season, is the pioneer in this sport. They've held the unsanctioned State Tournament there for the last two years and this years' is scheduled for March 4. Living in Iowa was on hand for the state's first dual meet between Gilbert and Spencer, where we met some of the wrestlers and their coaches.

Actually, Iowa is getting off to a slow start in girls' wrestling, which is already quite popular in several states, with Texas' 130 sanctioned high school teams leading the way. There has been a national tournament for the last several years, and the

International Olympics Committee is planning to add women's wrestling soon. Some see the sport as a possible savior for men's college wrestling programs which are being scaled back due to Title IX requirements for gender equality.

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