Rix nixing barriers: Marshwood’s female wrestler does not let gender issues grapple with love of sport

By Caitlin McLaughlin 4/2/02

There are few sports that are considered for one gender only. There are male and female basketball, soccer, swimming and hockey teams. There are men and women playing baseball and softball.

However, there are some exceptions. Deanna Rix, a freshman at Marshwood High School, finds herself participating in a sport that consists mostly of males. She is a wrestler and has been for 10 years

Marshwood High School freshman Deanna Rix is helping break wrestling’s gender barrier. (Craig Osborne/Staff photographer

Rix began her career at a tournament in New Jersey with her dad, Marshwood coach Matt Rix. There wasn’t anyone to wrestle in the 46-pound weight class. Rix, being exactly that weight decided to give it a try and filled in.

She won her match and has continued her winning ways in the sport she loves ever since.

Wrestling mostly guys has not really been difficult for Rix. She has been competing in the area for more than 10 years and has gotten to know many of her opponents.

"Sometimes, I don’t immediately have their respect, not just because I am a girl, but also because of my size," she said. "But as soon as they watch me wrestle, they know why I’m there — just to wrestle — and they are fine."

Rix also has no problems with her own teammates. She is accepted as one of the team, no different from anyone else. In fact, they are protective of her.

"It is like having a whole team of big brothers looking out for me," Rix said.

Standing 5-foot-2, Rix does not have what some picture as the typical build of a wrestler. Instead, she is rather petite. This often causes opponents who haven’t ever faced her to look past her.

"A girl at the nationals looked at me and giggled. She didn’t give me any respect really at all. I think she learned fast when I pinned her," said Rix, grinning. "I’m not very big, so I work hard to make up for it with my technique."

Her dad helps with her technique. He shows her new moves and ways to gain quickness. Rix has to work out, going to camps and weight training, to stay in shape year round. She also has to watch her diet to keep her weight down in the 119 weight class.

Rix has continued her success in wrestling right through junior high and into her freshman year of high school. In junior high, she almost went undefeated. Wrestling in high school is a bit different.

"I’ve had to adjust to a new level of competition," she said. "I’m 15-5, which is pretty good."

She recently placed third out of 26 in a national meet. Rix wrestles freestyle with the Southern Maine Trappers, with whom she will be going to the nationals in May. She will wrestle other girls there.

In freestyle wrestling, there is a lot more contact and fewer rules. Recently, through the Southern Maine Trappers, Rix started a wrestling program for girls. She taught five girls, all first-year wrestlers, some basic moves in order to get them ready for competition.

"They are all wrestling today, and one of them just won," Rix said proudly.

One of the things that makes wrestling meaningful for Rix is she gets to spend so much time with her father.

"It is really special the way I get to share this sport with my whole family," she said.

Though just a freshman, Rix is already planning to wrestle in college.

"It is a long ways from now, but I definitely want to continue," she said. "It is such a big part of my life."

Caitlin McLaughlin is a senior at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Dover. She writes about high school sports for Foster’s Daily Democrat. Her column appears every other Tuesday on the High School Sports Extra page.

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Schneider first female wrestler at West Fairmont

FAIRMONT 1/12/02
By Shannon Blosser

West Fairmont’s Lisa Schneider always wanted to wrestle. There was just one thing holding her back.
Her mother.
“I’ve been interested in wrestling since I was in seventh grade,” said Schneider. “I wasn’t really allowed. I just kept telling my mom (Diane) that I really wanted to do it. I just went to practice one day. I was really interesting in wrestling. I’ve been a mat maid for two years before this.
“It was something I wanted to do.”
And Schneider has done just that. Schneider has gone from keeping the score in the matches as a mat maid to becoming the first female wrestler at West Fairmont.
But she had to convince her mother first.
“My mother was scared that I would get hurt,” said Schneider.
She’s not as scared anymore.
“When I saw how hard she was working, I really started to support her,” said Diane. “She would go to practice and come home and not even complain.”
Schneider is one of four female wrestlers taking part in this weekend’s Winner’s Choice/Rotary wrestling tournament at the Woody Williams Armory. The others are Stephanie Beach of Hundred, Priscilla Miller of Preston and Wirt County’s Erica Dye.
Last year, Dye became the first female wrestler in West Virginia wrestling history to place in the state tournament.
Dye has been an inspiration for not only Schneider but all the other girls in the tournament.
“I talked to her last year, because I really wanted to wrestle last year,” said Schneider. “She told me how fun it was. She inspired me to wrestle.
“She is excellent.”
Like Dye, Schneider has to overcome the obstacles associated with women entering the sport that had long been a male-only sport.
One of the biggest obstacles has been gaining respect for her fellow wrestlers and friends.
“I’m happy that I am the first girl wrestler at Fairmont Senior,” said Schneider. “But a lot of people think I did it only to be the first person. When you think about it, there weren’t girls’ basketball teams 20 years ago. In 10 years, there will be girls’ wrestling teams in every school.”
Mark Delligatti, West Fairmont’s head coach, said he was apprehensive at first at allowing Schneider to join the team. That apprehensiveness, just like the one Schneider’s mother had, has disappeared.
“She’s a great person to have on the team,” said Delligatti. “She is just like one of the guys.”
And Schneider wants to be treated just like one of the guys during matches and practices.
“I’d rather them (boys) wrestle me as a guy,” said Schneider, “because then I know I won by being tough and not by them letting me win.”
However that’s not always the case. Some male wrestlers, when wrestling female wrestlers, will wrestle harder than they would against another male in order to keep from losing.
“I’ve beaten a couple of guys,” said Schneider. “It all depends on the guy. I guess it is their morals. If they’re going to wrestle you harder or they are going to let you go easy.”
That is just one of the hurdles that Schneider and the other females wrestling across West Virginia have had to incur. But she keeps coming back for more because of her love for the sport.
Something she has had since seventh grade and a love that was increased after watching Dye’s run through the state Class AA-A tournament last year.
“When I win a match and I get my hand raised,” said Schneider about why she loves wrestling, “it is the greatest feeling.”

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Women in Sports

by Laura Conaway 4/16/02

Pain and Drama on the Mat
'I Threw Him'

Whatever that guy really said to her, word for word, is long lost. He was the first opponent Christina Luksa wrestled in her Greco-Roman debut, there on the mats of a big novice tournament. Luksa, a 141-pound competitor from Sunset Park, Brooklyn, had slipped the hold of her high school principal and joined the all-male team in her senior year. Now she was staring down a teenage boy who wanted no part of making history.

"He was trying to talk to me," she recalls, "trying to break me down mentally. He was saying, 'Come on, come on,' shoving me around." She pauses, a gap long enough to bury the rest of what he said. "I said no. I kind of went, 'NO!'

Wrestling is like that, a drama hidden in the crush of skin on skin and drowned out by the grunts and yelps of extreme will. Luksa, now a freshman grappler—and the first female one—at Hunter College in Manhattan, avoided a pin that day but was beaten on points. Her second high school match went better.

"I did a headlock and I threw him—in the first minute," she says. "I didn't think about it. I just did it. Everybody was surprised. Just threw him, and the crowd went crazy. I was looking at him, and holding him, and trying to pin him down. And I was like, oh, my God. I didn't expect people to go crazy like that. I didn't expect so much attention.

"Once I had him down, and he was fighting off his back from there, I'm not going to let him out. So I made sure I held on tight, squeezing like crazy, using all my strength. Made sure. I got up, I had tears in my eyes—that always happens to me—and I was just jumping for joy. My coach was going nuts, 'cause they had told me I would be the first female ever to win a match."

She later heard that a boy she defeated cried, then quit his team. It wasn't the kind of outcome she'd hoped for, since for her the sport isn't about victory and defeat at all. For the record, at Hunter this year she lost twice and won once, against another rare female wrestler. More importantly, she finally got a chance to learn classic technique, with reversals and leg hooks and half-nelsons. She learned to hear the directions of her coach during a match, instead of going deaf to all but the sound of her own heartbeat. She learned to deal with being afraid: hyperventilating in the corner before her bouts, her mind twisting between a preview of the right moves and a litany of others' motivations.

"If there's no fear, then why are you doing it?" Luksa says. "It's a rough sport, especially with guys. The other team, the guy I'm wrestling, what is he thinking? Does he want to basically murder me because he doesn't want to lose to a girl, or is he going to play fair?"

And then there's pain, the demon above all. "I have a good tolerance for pain," she says, with characteristic calculation. "It's all about pain. You're trying to fight off your back, and they're holding on to your arm or neck and cranking it, sometimes cutting off your breathing. If you're going to give up, then of course you're not going to be in that much pain. But if you're going to fight, you're going to be in pain. You'll take that pain, and you won't feel it then maybe because of the adrenaline, but after, you'll feel it." This season, against another woman, she battled from flat on her back for a full seven minutes, refusing the easy surrender of a pin. She says she's not sure she'd hold out that way against a man.

Feeling more than welcome as the lone woman on her team, she sometimes fusses at her fellow grapplers to wash out their knee pads, which collect a powerful funk. White shirts worn to practice won't stay white, she says, but will end up black with dirt and red with blood. She likes that, the sweat and the grunge. She likes the camaraderie, the way teammates grab hold of one another and slap hands.

One day, she sees herself besting a man for Hunter. "People now say they don't want to lose to a girl," she says. "But if I could be on this team, and I last for a year, then why is it so hard to believe that I could beat them? Of course I think about it, but it's society. The way they put it, a guy shouldn't lose to a girl. It's just like that."

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Rockbridge County wrestler Piper Blouin (right) relaxes with other teammates during the Wildcat Invitational last Saturday afternoon. Blouin is the first female wrestler on the RCHS squad, and, as near as anyone can tell, the first female wrestler ever in the Rockbridge area. For more on her story, see the Jan. 24 issue of The News-Gazette.

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