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The M-S Bulldogs won the Regional Title and advanced 12 wrestlers to Sectionals. The Bulldogs were competitive in all 14 weights with 12 in the finals and 2 wrestling for 3rd place. M-S was able to claim 9 Regional Champions, three 2nd Place, and two 4th place. Sectionals will be wrestled at Normal Community West on Friday, Feb. 8, and Saturday, Feb. 9. By winning the Regional Team Title, M-S Bulldogs will also advance to Team Sectionals. Team Sectionals will be hosted by Peoria Woodruff on Tuesday, Feb. 19.
Regional Champions
Mary Kelly - 103
Chris Kelly - 112
Kyle Schutte - 119
Mike Vandre - 125
Brent Johnson - 130
Bobby Hill - 135
Brandon Arnold - 145
Ryan Stites - 171
Joe Sapp - 215
Bulldogs Take Down Mt Zion
On Thursday, Jan. 24th, M-S honored their seniors before defeating Mt. Zion 48-17. Seniors honored were Mary Kelly (103), Bobby Hill (135), Brandon Arnold (145) and Ryan Stites (171). We wish them a happy and successful future. Mike Vandre and Brent Johnson tied for the quickest fall with falls over their Mt. Zion opponents in 1:24. Other winners by fall were Kyle Schutte, Bobby Hill, Brandon Arnold, and Corey Johnson.
Bulldogs are 21-1
On Thursday, Jan. 17th, M-S defeated Monticello 56-16. Winners by fall for the Bulldogs were Justin Ernst, Bobby Hill and Ryan Stites. Cory Falcon and Josh Dallas both won by technical fall. Others winning without forfeits were Mike Vandre, Brent Johnson and Andrew White.
On Saturday, Jan. 19th, the Bulldogs travled to East Moline for a quadrangualar. M-S defeated Normal Community 60-9, Metamora 36-35 and United Township 41-23. Corey Johnson Had the quickest fall for the Bulldogs with a pin in 27 seconds over Dickers of East Moline. Other winners by fall were Mary Kelly (3), Justin Ernst, Kyle Schutte(2), Brent Johnson, Bobby Hill, Brandon Arnold, Andrew White, Ryan Stites(2). Winners by technical fall were Justin Ernst, Brent Johnson and Matt Nowak. Triple winners were:
Mary Kelly - F 0:41, F 1:41, F 2:57
Brent Johnson - MD 14-0, F 3:51, TF 3:27
Bobby Hill - MD 17-5, F 1:17, D 4-2
Joe Sapp - D 7-2, D 12-6, D 9-4
Corey Johnson - F 0:44, F 0:27, D 9-2
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Mahomet wins team sectional in wrestling, heads to state
2/20/02
PEORIA -- Mike Vandre earned a 5-3 decision in the final match at 125 pounds to lift Mahomet-Seymour High School to a 29-28 victory over LaSalle-Peru Tuesday night in the Class AA Peoria Woodruff Dual Team Sectional Wrestling Tournament.
The victory lifted 16th-ranked Mahomet-Seymour to the Dual Team State Tournament at Naperville Saturday. The Bulldogs will face Granite City at 9 a.m. in a quarterfinal match.
Earlier, Mahomet-Seymour downed Bloomington 42-33 and LaSalle-Peru ousted Metamora 49-20 in the semifinals.
Mahomet-Seymour trailed 24-18 with four matches left. Mary Kelly (103) and Chris Kelly (112) earned major decisions to put the Bulldogs ahead 26-24. After LaSalle-Peru won a major decision at 119, Vandre's victory sent the Bulldogs to state.
Against BHS, the Bulldogs built an early 24-3 lead. BHS won the first match at 130 with Jim Leeds gaining a 9-7 decision over Brett Johnson before Mahomet-Seymour got falls from Bobby Hill (135), Brandon Arnold (145), Matt Nowak (152) and Ryan Stites (171), and Josh Jeffers received a forfeit at 140 in five of the next six matches.
LaSalle-Peru jumped to a 24-0 lead against Metamora and was never threatened. Nick McClone had the Redbirds' lone pin at 152.
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Revolutionary wrestler Teresa Dal Ben looks to continue rampage to national stage
Elk Grove Citizen 2/20/02
Teresa Dal Ben battles with Nick Murray from Sheldon. Dal Ben tallied a 7-5 record against male opponents this year. |
Matt Sumpter, Sports Editor - The Elk Grove area is home to the number-two prep wrestler in the country. This grappler, who suits up for the Laguna Creek High Cardinals, has already joined college level athletes on the mat and feels comfortable saying that she is shooting for the 2004
Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.
Yes, she.
Teresa Dal Ben is finishing her senior year for the Laguna Creek wrestling team in grand fashion, having tallied a 27-6 record overall, with a 20-1 record versus female opponents and a 7-5 mark squaring off with the guys. She has won one state meet and prepares for another in the second week of March, with a national tournament a week later.
Dal Ben moved to Elk Grove as an eight-year-old and places little above wrestling, and will miss her senior ball this year while she will be wrestling for a number-one ranking in the country at Nationals. When asked about her hobbies or what she enjoys, the 122-pound pioneer can only return to where she feels most comfortable, the mat.
"Just wrestling, it is my life," the Fresno native chuckled. "I eat and breathe wrestling; it’s hard and draining since the season started in October."
This season may have been a long one for Dal Ben, but it can be guaranteed that it was longer for her opponents. She lost her first match to a female in three years earlier this season, only to find her revenge at the recent state meet in Vallejo. Adriana Cervantes of Casa Grande stole the first bout between the two when Dal Ben bruised her ribs and tore cartilage in her midsection.
Down one point at that season meet, Dal Ben returned from the injury time out to finish the contest with a two-point takedown, but the official called her toes on the line and ended the injury period and Dal Ben’s comeback.
Dal Ben would seek redemption in Vallejo at the state meet in a rematch with Cervantes, and she would find it 4-0 despite suffering from flu symptoms for a week prior.
"The rematch was so important to me because I hadn’t lost in the state in 3 years. It was the most devastating match in my career," she said. "But it was an outstanding rematch and the most emotional time of my life."
"Winning state meant so much to me and I was in a state of taking everything serious and totally determined to do my best."
Dal Ben pinned her first opponent in under a minute and was not scored on in for the entire competition in Vallejo, a rare feat in the wrestling ranks, and a feat that did not come easy. To prepare for the state meet, Dal Ben woke up daily at 4:30 a.m., ran two miles before school during the week, worked out at wrestling practice, only to finish off her evenings with three more miles on the treadmill.
She has committed herself to wrestle for NAIA Menlo College in the fall in the college ranks, and Menlo is a team she has wrestled international exhibitions with, and it is the number-eight ranked program in the country.
Dal Ben will enter the ranks of freestyle wrestling where she will prepare for a shot at the Summer Games in two years. It will be the first time women have wrestled in the Olympiad, and it will be where the Olympics first began.
But first, what is she going to do after this season?
"I’m going to indulge in all the food I can and when I get too fat it’s back to the treadmill," she said.
Work, work, work.
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Brackets for the UIL 2002 Girls' State Wrestling Matches
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: GRIGSBY STUDENTS JOIN EFFORT TO GET GIRLS IN WRESTLING
Robert Kelly Of The Post-Dispatch 2/18/02
* It's becoming more common across the state for girls to wrestle on
formerly all-boys teams, according to the Illinois Girls Wrestling
Association.
Three sixth-grade girls at Grigsby Middle School in Granite City
decided they didn't want their brothers to have all the fun while they watched
the boys compete in wrestling matches.
So the girls joined the boys wrestling team. "Girls can do anything a
boy can do," said wrestler Sulyn Keomanivane, 12.
Her friends Erika Prazma and Anna Tingley, both 12, agreed. And to
prove their point, Erika and Anna have beaten boys in matches this school
year.
"Some of them kind of get mad about that," Erika conceded.
Some school administrators also questioned whether girls should be
wrestling boys. The administrators who oversee wrestling matches for Madison
County junior high schools briefly banned girls from taking part in the
matches, saying the county athletic conference defined wrestling as a boys'
sport.
But teams at Grigsby, North Junior High in Collinsville and Fulton
Junior High in O'Fallon that have girls who wrestle protested the ban. Soon,
the rules were revised, and the girls were reinstated. They've been
competing in - and sometimes winning - a few matches since then.
In recent years, it has become more common for girls to wrestle on what
had been all-boys junior high teams in Illinois, said Cate Chase of
Naperville, a Chicago suburb. Chase helped organize and now is president of the
Illinois Girls Wrestling Association.
She got involved because her daughter, Caitlin, an eighth-grader,
wanted to wrestle on a boys team when she was in fourth grade but wasn't allowed
to do so.
"Four years ago, there wasn't an outlet for this, but now there is,"
Chase said.
She said girl wrestlers still aren't accepted at all schools. "The
girls go through so much to get to wrestle," she said. "If they're good, they're
made fun of by some of the boys, and if they're bad, they're also made fun
of."
But some girls persevere and even are successful in wrestling at the
high-school level.
At Seymour High School at Mahomet, near Champaign, Ill., senior
wrestler Mary Kelly has won enough matches against boys in her 103-pound weight
class that she almost qualified for the state tournament last week, said Dave
Gannaway, an assistant executive director of the Illinois High School
Association. She lost in a sectional qualifying match.
A few girls also wrestle on boys high-school teams in Missouri, said
Dale K. Pleimann, an assistant executive director of the Missouri State High
School Activities Association.
At the Missouri School for the Blind near Tower Grove Park in St.
Louis, high-school senior Amanda House has been wrestling on the boys team in
the 125-pound class for the past two years.
House hasn't beaten any boys, except for three who forfeited because
they wouldn't wrestle her. At least one of those boys cited religious
reasons.
Even so, referees keep the girl-versus-boy matches from having any
sexual harassment, meet organizers contend. But they add that girls usually
have greater success wrestling against other girls - especially as they get
older and boys in the same weight classes gain more upper-body strength.
Consequently, some schools are starting girls' wrestling leagues at the
high-school level. And women's wrestling has become a varsity sport at
a handful of colleges.
Women's wrestling also could become an Olympic sport in 2004, Chase
noted. "So there's a big push to get girls into wrestling now nationally," she
said.
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Bill keeping boy, girl wrestlers apart advances
BRIAN BAKST, Associated Press Writer 2/19/01
Legislators grappled with a touchy issue Tuesday as a House committee
approved a bill that would keep girls and boys from squaring off in
high school wrestling matches.
The House Education Policy Committee sent a bill to the floor that
would outlaw mixed-sex wrestling teams. The debate pits a desire for gender
equity in sports against concerns over close physical contact among wrestlers
of the opposite sex. The divided voice vote followed testimony from
students, coaches and parents, and after two boys from the Burnsville High School
wrestling team demonstrated a fireman's carry, a high-crotch takedown
and a half-nelson - moves requiring touching that would be considered
inappropriate off the mat.
Ian Stoneberg, one of the wrestlers, recalled his match with a girl
when he as a freshman.
"It was very awkward for me," he said. "I felt bad after the match."
It's uncomfortable for some girls, too. Elizabeth Maxwell, a freshman
at Trinity School at River Ridge in Bloomington, said she would go out for
a girls-only team but is not about to get on the mat with a boy.
"They touch the chest areas and the crotch areas," she told
legislators. "If you had a daughter, you wouldn't want your daughter out there."
Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, is the bill's sponsor. She has
supporters on both sides of the political aisle, including Rep. Paul Marquart,
DFL-Dilworth.
Marquart coaches wrestling and has gone so far as to forfeit matches
instead of asking boys on his team to face a girl. Trinity coach Pat Murphy
told the committee about a boy who faced the choice of wrestling a girl or
giving up a chance to go to the state tournament. The boy went ahead but found no
joy in winning, Murphy said.
Marquart said he can't understand why such contact between sexes is
acceptable on the wrestling mat, but scorned in other school settings.
"If we saw the same thing in the hallways of the school we'd break that
up and send them to detention," he said.
The dilemma stems from a decision 21 years ago, when the Legislature
deemed it discrimination to restrict athletic opportunities to one sex.
According to the Minnesota State High School League, there are no girls-only
wrestling teams; the number of individual female wrestlers was not available.
Rep. Mary Jo McGuire, DFL-Falcon Heights, said the proposal could shut
the door to some female athletes.
"By not having the mixed teams, we effectively eliminate high school
wrestling from the options girls have," McGuire said.
That's a consequence Kathleen Woodbury is willing to accept. Woodbury,
a White Bear Lake track and swimming coach and the mother of a
14-year-old boy who wrestles, said Minnesota should join 39 other states that don't
allow the mixed competition.
"The pendulum has swung too far," she said.
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House panel moves to outlaw mixed-sex wrestling
Mark Brunswick Star Tribune
Published Feb 20, 2002
To make their point about the close physical contact required of their sport, two Burnsville High School wrestlers came to the center of Room 200 of the State Office Building in St. Paul on Tuesday to demonstrate to a House committee the intricacies of the high crotch takedown.
Earlier, the wrestlers, a coach, a frustrated mother and others testified in favor of a bill that would require a high school wrestling team to be limited to members of one sex.
The bill would repeal portions of a state law that requires high school wrestling teams to allow girls to try out and participate if there is no equivalent girls' team. Because there are no girls' high school wrestling teams, it has become a provision in law unique to the sport.
After often-dramatic testimony about the awkwardness of a boy wrestling a girl, the bill passed the Education Policy Committee on a voice vote. It will go to the House floor for a vote.
"I've always been told that you have to have respect for women. The nature of the sport goes against what I've been taught," said Abe Olson, a wrestler from Trinity School at River Ridge in Bloomington, one of several Christian-oriented schools that historically have refused to allow boys to wrestle girls competitively. "It's different than football. There you're separated by pads, not a thin layer of Spandex."
Kathleen Woodbury, a track and swimming coach in White Bear Lake and the mother of a high school wrestler, testified about the anguish her son felt when he declined to wrestle a girl and was forced to forfeit his match, affecting his ability to move on in subsequent state tournaments.
"They are up against this almighty giant -- women's rights. What about the males' rights? The pendulum has swung too far," she said. "When a boy has to wrestle a girl, there is an air in the room. Everyone looks to see who's in this match. It's sort of like a funeral."
Roger Aronson, a representative of the Minnesota State High School League, the state's governing organization of high school extracurricular activities, testified that the legislation was changed 21 years ago to allow girls on boys' wrestling teams in response to legal issues and increased interest in girls participating in a wider array of competitive sports.
In the mid-1990s, several girls asked to join teams in the St. Paul schools but their requests were denied. The parents of one girl filed a complaint, and she was ultimately allowed to compete. But Aronson said he was not aware of any additional complaints about exclusion since then.
Scope of participation
In the 1999-2000 school year, 26 girls participated in high school wrestling in Minnesota, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
Three states -- Florida, Hawaii and Texas -- have separate girls' state high school wrestling championships. During the 2000-2001 school year, 3,032 girls from 896 high schools nationally participated in high school wrestling, most of them on boys' teams, according to the federation. The same year, 244,984 boys took part in wrestling at 9,404 high schools.
Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, the House sponsor, said she did not think the legislation would face a legal challenge.
But during debate, Rep. Mary Jo McGuire, DFL-Falcon Heights, said the proposal could shut the door to some female athletes.
Title IX, the federal law that sets standards for gender equity in sports, does not require schools to place girls on boys' wrestling teams. But some states, including Minnesota, allow it.
"By not having the mixed teams, we effectively eliminate high school wrestling from the options girls have," McGuire said.
That would be true at Holdingford High School outside of St. Cloud, for instance, where three eighth-grade girls are wrestling for the Huskers this year, two occasionally at the varsity level. The school could not support a girls' wrestling team, said athletic director Mark Messman, who said he was not aware of any controversies associated with the girls' participation.
The school has had to make accommodations for separate locker rooms and weigh-ins. One school on the schedule requires Holdingford to let it know ahead of time how many girls will be wrestling and at what weight so that parents of potential competitors can be notified.
"Will [the girls] be back next year? I don't know," Messman said.
At the committee hearing, Elizabeth Maxwell, a student at Trinity School, said she would go out for a girls-only team but would not compete against a boy.
"They touch the chest areas and the crotch areas," she told legislators. "If you had a daughter, you wouldn't want your daughter out there."
To illustrate to the uninitiated, Ian Stoneberg and Tim Berceau, wrestlers from Burnsville High School, were invited to the middle of the committee room, where they demonstrated the required physical closeness of moves such as a fireman's carry and a half nelson.
"If we saw these same things in the hallways of the school, we'd break them up and send someone to detention," said Rep. Paul Marquart, DFL-Dilworth, a teacher and wrestling coach, who will not allow his teams to wrestle girls.
