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Loose canon A Girl Wrestler’s Pain

Bruce Schimmel 2/15/2001

Why does 17-year-old Jennafer Pavlik love to wrestle? Out of context, her
answer sounds shocking.
"I love the competition. And, I love the punishment, the pain. I love pain.
And I love giving pain.
"I like seeing the face of somebody in pain, knowing that you’re putting
them in pain, and they want to give up."
Hearing this from a soft-spoken girl with pudgy cheeks and a rounded figure
makes you wonder if she’s pulling your leg. But she’s not. For despite her
easy smile and her everyday teddy-bear demeanor, Jenna is all business on
the wrestling mat. There’s hard muscle under those curves.
Jenna is the only girl wrestler on the Cape Henlopen (DE) high school boys’
team. Since she was 14, Jenna has wrestled men as heavy as 160 pounds, and
has often pinned them.
Which is why she is now captain of the men’s varsity team — the only female
captain in the country — and is ranked first among girls of her age in the
U.S.A.Initially, there were outcries from Jenna’s mostly conservative
community. Some didn’t think it was right for a girl to be receiving pain from
boys (and giving that pain right back) in a public display. But now many
detractors have become supporters, including her coach, Chris Mattioni, who
had never imagined that a girl who wrestles boys could be a serious contender.
Coach Mattioni — who wrestled for The Citadel, a bastion of masculinity —
says he now thinks it’s okay, "as long is there isn’t a double standard." He
chose Jenna to be captain, he adds, because "she works harder than anyone
else on the team."
Jenna has to, especially since she wrestles in heavier weight classes. On
the upper end of the scale, the difference in strength between the sexes is
greatest. And in wrestling, you need strength to dish out enough punishment
to get your opponent to give in.
But if strength is Jenna’s weakness, patience is her power. She endures the
punishment, biding her time, waiting for the boy to run out of steam. In a
clutch, her face betrays none of the hurt. She looks indifferent, almost serene.
It seems like minutes pass with nothing happening. Then suddenly, Jenna
makes a quick shift, and the boy finds himself on his back.
Jenna prefers wrestling males; she likes the natural disadvantage. She wants
to continue wrestling men in college, on the way to her ultimate goal of
winning the gold at the Olympics.
But that will also take some patience. Wrestling, among the world’s oldest
athletic contests, isn’t yet an Olympic sport for women.
There are now 3,000 girls wrestling in high school, a tenfold increase in a
decade. But they, like Jenna, will have to wait for the International
Olympic Committee to sanction their sport.